10 Reasons Modern Keyboards are Shit
Photo for illustration purposes only, this ain’t my nasty skanky-ho keyboard
Hi, I’m Rob Manuel and I’ve got a problem with keyboards. A big fucking problem. I can bore for hours on the subject, and so in the small hope that the magic of the internet will get my message to keyboard designers, here’s my rant. Hold onto your hat, it’s going to be a rough ride.
1. Numlock
What is the fucking point of numlock? Why would I ever want to use the numeric keypad as a cursor? Yes I imagine it’s some kind of gay backwards compatibility thing, but it’s just a pain in the arse. The only time I ever press it is by accident and then wonder why the number keys have stopped working.
2. Capslock
Apparently capslock was considered quite useful on typewriters. Probably because TYPING IN CAPS WAS THE ONLY WAY TO DO EMPHASIS. But we have bold now, and the only people who type in caps are the modern green-inkers who send me loony emails about their cats.
Again, it’s a key I press only by accident, normally when filling in a username / password thing, and using tab to change the form focus, missing and end-up adding robmanuelBADGERSEX to the auto-complete. Gah.
Although recently I have found a setting in the control panel to disable the damn thing. Which made me as happy as a pig in shit.
3. Multimedia keys
All those fucking keys at the top of the keyboard. They’re never built like proper keys and always look shoddy and plasticy.
But my problem is more than aesthetics. It’s standardisation. Every last damn keyboard manufacturer has a different idea of what these keys should be doing.
Hence I don’t bother using them as I swap machines a lot between home and offices and don’t want to have conflicting and non-standard keyboard information in my brain. I don’t want to on another PC and automatically stabbing the messenger button, to find it’s opened some shitty sales portal.
And the corporate ego of it all! My old HP keyboard had a internet button that opened the bloody hp.com homepage. What use is that to man or beast? I’ve already bought an HP computer; I don’t need to buy a second.
4. US keyboards
Oh jesus pillocking shit. Who thought it was a good idea to make English and American keyboards different. We speak the same bloody language for gods sake. It’s not like we need a load of twirly umlauts on the keys. The crucial and mind-boggling shit variation is the enter key. On the UK version is nice and large and shaped like an upside down Tetris L brick. The shape is distinctive to the touch and you can easily find it by feel in poor light conditions.
In USA the key is roughly the same shape as the backspace key, with the saved space being used for the backslash / pipe key. Duh, now that’s a brilliant idea isn’t it? Because normal PC operation uses those characters all the time. Probably a hang-over from DOS when your computer was controlled by an arcane series of cryptic symbols. Or small donkeys, I forget now.
5. Colour
Why colour a keyboard cream? Because the manufactures want it to get dirty and you have to buy a new one every three months? Wired magazine once memorably described the gunk as “keyboard plaque”, but the state of some keyboards I’ve seen, it’s more like “keyboard AIDS.” There should be a law that makes all keyboards black. Well, unless you’re a Steve Jobs acolyte and think white keyboards where every bastard button looks like the other is a good idea.
6. Volume control mute
Now, the volume control is one of the few keyboard advancements of recent years that’s a good idea. Using a PC has become a noisy activity, but sometimes you need to answer the phone and being able to quickly hit mute without fiddling with the mouse rocks.
But the small problem is that the mute key often works after the PC is fully booted, meaning that the system “whoosh” noise will play regardless.
Which means using my laptop late at night can wake my family. I’ve taken to keeping an old pair of broken headphones handy so that I can push the jack into the speaker socket and re-route the nasty noises.
7. Sleep button
I’m highly suspicious of the sleep button. In principle it’s great, but I had such a bad experience with the sleep mode crashing the PC and losing my work that I don’t trust it. At least on the recent Microsoft keyboards it’s in the far right corner and difficult to hit by accident. On my old HP keyboard it was place just above the ESC key and I’d hit it when trying to stop a webpage loading, and then go “Argh! My PC is going to die! Don’t die, little computer.”
8. Non-standard insert block
The Microsoft keyboard design team are clearly back on the crack pipe. First they made the insane “natural” keyboard that split the keyboard into two chunks for touch typists. And secondly they’ve recently re-designed the insert block.
Why? All it means is I’m constantly pressing the wrong keys when I try and navigate documents via pagedown and home keys.
I’m sure they did some lovely usability study and worked out it was more efficient or something, but for fucks sake, don’t muck with the standards. I know how to use the old one and don’t want to learn a new one. Haven’t you learnt anything from those crappy Dvorak keyboards that attempted to persuade people to abandon qwerty?
9. Legs
What is the point of giving a keyboard legs? Yes keyboards are more pleasant to type on with a small tilt, so why not simply make the keyboard shaped like a wedge of cheese? It’s a particular sore point for me as I’ve thrown away perfectly good keyboards after accidentally snapping one of the pathetic spindly plastic legs.
10. Function keys
Grr. Another Microsoft “innovation.” On recent keyboards they’ve move the function keys from blocks of four to blocks of three. I can see what they’re trying to achieve here. Visually three is a better shape to help aid the memory: something is either on the left, the middle or the right. However, again this move away from standards results in me pressing the wrong key. For example I regularly press F5 to refresh an internet page, which my brain has hard-wired to know it’s the first key of the second block. Microsoft has moved it to the second key of the second block, hence I now keep keep pressing F4 and wonder why nothing is happening.
… 2 Bonus reasons, there’s no stopping now …
11. F Lock
Oh damn your eyes Microsoft. Is nothing sacred any more? You’re taking my function keys and replacing them with some bollocks about “New, Open and Close”? Ok, the F Lock turns all this off and it stays off which in theory is fine. Except they’ve made the (rather useful for screen grabs) PrtScn key only work whilst F Lock is off. Hence to grab a screen now I have to press three keys instead of one. Nice one, you bunch of keyboard bastards.
12. Wireless
What’s this obsession with making everything wireless? Yes having your laptop connecting to the internet whilst you take a dump in the bog is one of the marvels of the technological age. However we don’t need wireless keyboards on the desktop. I recently was nosing around PC world and except for a shitty £5.00 made of crap thing, that’s all they were selling.
For fucks sake. It’s not an innovation to stick batteries in a keyboard. It’s a pain in the anus. I don’t want to stop typing because my keyboard is out of batteries, it’s just fucking insane.
End bit
Now that I’ve ranted, I really do feel much better. Carry on, as you were. Or why not look on Flickr for some kittens?
UPDATE - Hello to the Digg / Fark readers, and the other blogs linking my rant. BTW: I’ve got a book out, and it’s very rude.
CAPSLOCK…. unfortunately I work at a hospital where we have a medical records system that requires that you type patient names in ALLCAPS. It is quite annoying, but the medical records system is current and quite expensive (crappy, but current and quite expensive). So for our hospital and the hundreds of others that use this system, capslock is not obsolete yet.
my friends and i affectionately refer to the ‘gunk’ that builds up on heavily used keyboards and console controllers as “thumb snot”.
uhhh, you wasted your 15 minutes of fame on a blog entry about…keyboards.
LAWL!
1: cursor keys are great but the numpad has diagonal cursors and many nice things.
2: capslock can be useful for programming and other things.
3: i’m happy with any extra keys. you can usually assign what task the key does. it’s nice to have a browser button.
4: remember americans can’t even accept metric…
5: spray paint it!
6: mute is great but since keyboards came well before sound cards it is just a glorified multimedia key which needs software to run. why don’t you disable the startup sound?
7: ya computers shouldn’t sleep, thats why cyborgs will take over. great example about the hp keyboards when i did support on them i would press the sleep button while on calls, DAMN button!
8: leave it to m$ to change something into a way that makes you have to buy their keyboard again once you are used to how it works.
9: i never use legs so if the kb was wedged i might not like it. they do it because it’s an option
10: see 8
Well you probably got a point or two, but you can overexedurate. However, in frustrating times thats what people do ;).
1. I dont use the number keys, probably as one of the few programmers out there… Anyway, I agree on your point for other peoples sake, not mine. I can manage ;).
2. The capslock can be usefull, especialy for programmers that need uppercase letters for various tasks. So maybe you might find it crappy, but there is a use for it.
3. And the multimedia buttons can be usefull, buty only if you can program them. Otherwise I won’t use them anyway.
4. The US keyboard thing is not realy my problem, cause I have a dutch keyboard. However, sometimes it switches between boards if you press some different key combinations. And that is crap. But thats more of a software issue.
5. I don’t get the colour thing. All keyboards loose colour. You just need to clean them every once in a while.
6. I realy agree on the volume thing. It happens to me on my laptop about every time!
7. The sleep button itself is neat. So I don’t blame the button. But placement of these keys can be realy annyoing. Once at work I had the Power, sleep and wake button below the delete end and page down button. Talking about ‘ill’ placement!
8. I know people who prefer a broken keyboard, but a redesign in key formations is bad. Just like removing keys and adding that annoying ‘fn’ key that you need to press in combination with something else to do something you are used doing.
9. I can not argue with the leg thing. But it does cost less plastic to make these crappy things ;).
10. Never rearange keys. That sucks. Just like extra keys are fine as long as you add them on the side or top or somewhere else. Don’t just stick em between anything or move them around. We don’t want that.
11. I dont know an F-lock. Is it the fn thing I mentiond earlyer? Cause yeah. That bites ;).
12. There are good wireless keyboards, but I am not a fan of wireless keyboards and or mouses. However, other people swear by them. So I don’t think they suck that badly ;).
And some points I scavanged from other comments:
Windows key. Yes the location is anoying, but you will get used to it. And it is usefull to when a game freezes or you want to return to windows. Just press it and it works! I know alt-tab should do the same, but sometimes it just does not.
Pairs of keys (like shift ad ctrl). People like the pairs because it gives them more keys ;). This way you can map more keys and you can off course use wasd and the arrows as two complete sets of controls for splitscreen play ;). But I get your point.
The ‘right click’ key. Thsi one is rather usefull when you have no mouse. So I like it, however I dont like the fact they jammed it between other keys.
Insert. I dont like the insert key and I agree with the people who find it outdated. However, this is a personal opinion.
NOTE: Cool my current keyboard has an fn key as well! Thank god its completely out of range of my normal day to day range!
L-shaped enter key is not a US versus UK thing because there are plenty of US keyboards that are made with an L-shape enter key.
The distinction came because when the IBM Model M was released, they had the small enter key on the US version and an L-shaped key on the International English version. The UK Model M was just strange, it had a tall skinny enter key.
I myself never find myself hitting the upper part of the enter key. I tend to hit the part right next to ” because that is closer. (but by my reasoning spacebar could be made narrower too, which I bet would drive you totally insane)
And “page up” and “page down”, two of the most important keys EVER in an O/S designed from the group up as an office. Instead of JUMPING instantly and confusingly around the page, it should slide quickly down to where its going. And why is gods name is it over in China by the numpad? As a programmer I use page/up down in Gnome over and over and over… If I try in windows, the JUMP effect makes me lose my place and I get all confused.
PgUP, PgDn for the win!
Get a Mac keyboard (with a Mac preferable). Sure, except for it being “white” everything is standard and has been for a long time now! The sound control buttons, there’s no num lock or scroll lock (there is a caps lock). There’s 15 “F” keys, most of which are used by OSX. There’s no little legs holding it up, it’s solid, and it has a USB hub… oh, and its got a bloody cord which doesn’t take batteries! I really don’t see the point of these wireless keyboards. They are more of a pain in the ass. I mean, how many times do you take your keyboard more than three feet from the screen?
The only thing I miss when using a Mac keyboard on my PC is the Print Screen button since I do a lot of screenshots, and the Mac keys like Mute and stuff don’t work. I wish I could find a driver for that, and maybe switch control to be the “command” key… just to keep it consistent.
One more point for the list: The Qwerty layout, we should have standardised on DOVAK years ago. It’s odd better keyboard designs haven’t floated to the top of the free-market pile available. People should be more picky!
i hate caps lock, insert, and the windows keys. on coming into contact with any new keyboard i instantly pop them off and throw them in the bin. but then the questions from everyone who passes, “why is your keyboard…” DON’T GET ME STARTED!!! ha.
i find it increasingly difficult to just buy a keyboard with some normal keys on it that i can plug into my computer. all this multimedia crap and bizarro keyboard things, i hate it!!!
*vents*
I have to agree with the comment about function keys being on a toggle lock. Until recently I used a Logitech keyboard that thought the primary purpose of function keys was as multimedia controls every time I booted up – had to press the f lock to make them do anything useful. Wouldn’t have minded quite so much but the iTouch software that was required to support mm controls caused conflicts with other (more useful) software so I couldn’t use it anyway!
As of 2 weeks ago I have a beautiful Saitek Eclipse II keyboard which is an absolute joy to use and looks cool. Highly recommended.
Why aren’t the most used key’s in the middle of the keyboard?
http://bscodesignmatters.blogspot.com/2006/07/common-sense-computer-keyboard.html
Actually I use the key above the enter key all the time while programming. \n \t \r \\ etc.
I use a Dell Enhanced USB Multimedia Keyboard (#310-6166), freaking lovely keyboard. And no crappy bad-feeling multimedia keys either.
Dont forget keylock, how many keys you can press down, important in gaming. The game Frets of Fire really showed how bad some keyboards are. Cant press f1 thru f5 all at once. And playing FPS games can really be a hassle if a key doesnt register.
Keylock, length of key press, comfort,inverted T keys, and real 6 button horizontal insert/home/page keys are the biggest mistakes. A do like keyboards with usb hubs and standard layouts.
Wireless keyboard? I can give you one great reason for having one: gaming. My PC is connected by an HDMI cable to my TV, and it’s great being able to kick back in my recliner and game on my TV like I would for any other game console. Otherwise, it’s useless, but if you’re going to go the HDTV computer game route, this is a must-have feature.
You can get Sun Microsystem keyboards with the Sun traditional keyboard layout that switchs the Control key and the Caps Lock key. The idea being that the Control key is more useful and should be on the home row. You can get them in a usb version that works on PCs, just make sure you don’t order the PC layout.
dude, you have maybe 4 or 5 legitimate gripes.
programmers and linux users use pipe all the time.
if you want to go out and crusade about poor key choices, get them to stop moving the farking backtick all over the place.
You’re pretty fucking hilarious. That was a good read.
I have a couple comments, though, and of course they’re negative.. because I’ve already said the thing as a whole was awesome.
The backslash/pipe key is used a tonne in programming or coding. The ‘pipe’ is an ‘or’ operator, and I’m sure the backslash does something too complected for me to understand. Oh, wait, you definitely need it when trying to flash/upgrade your BIOS. Yea, that’s about it.
I can understand keyboard legs as some do prefer keyboards at different angles – but you’re right, they’re flimsy as shit.
Nicely written.
years ago i got myself a happy hacking keyboard lite, black, its still not approaching retirement. function keys, (caps|num|scroll) lock, insert and delete are safely hidden away behind Fn key combinations. The control key is in the right place and the Enter key is not the ‘tetris’ return key. Pretty compact, but it does have legs (which don’t really bother me). There are no ‘multimedia’ keys. The keyboard is also available with blank keytops to ward against hunt and peck typists.
I have a logitech keyboard that comes with a second option for all the function keys. Stuff like f2 becomes email etc. Guess what, when you boot the computer the keyboard defaults to the alternative option. Nowhere in Logitech’s drivers is there an way to turn off this feature. So, if you are playing a FPS game like Battlefield 2, and you click on f2 in order to switch positions inside a helicoper, suddenly you are booted to your email program. Thanks Logitech.
Great rant. My favorite that you missed is that every F’ing keyboard has all the special keys in different places. Maybe the GUI guys don’t care, but I hack a lot in shells, programs, IDEs, etc. and I need to be able to use ~ and | and assorted flavors of brackets. Every F’ing vendor puts them all in different places.
I have about twenty computers that I use, three laptops, a main WIndows and a main Linux machine, and a bunch of others. Every one of them has a different keyboard layout.
Arrrggghhh.
This was great! I’ve done this:
I’ve taken to keeping an old pair of broken headphones handy so that I can push the jack into the speaker socket and re-route the nasty noises.
Great!
I love you.
Oh my god, this is the greatest thing I have read all week.
I award to you all the naughty, naughty badgersex you can handle.
The worst key ever invented: “Help”
Totally, completely, utterly USELESS, and it completely gets in the way of everything. Never mind the fact that EVERY SINGLE application ever written that *has* a help function that could be called by a ‘Help’ button also has a ‘Help’ menu INSIDE the software. Talk about useless redundancy.
On a Mac, help is its own key. Just to the right of ‘Delete’. Just above another ‘Delete’ and just to the left of ‘Home’ and ‘End’. It must have been placed there by Satan himself.
On Windows, help is F1. Conveniently right next to F2, which anyone who uses Excel regularly uses frequently to edit a cell/formula. Placed by Son of Satan, no doubt. I have the schematics with his signature to prove it.
ARGH. I could scream. In fact, excuse me, I will.
Ah…. much better. Now, as for my own personal cure for all my keyboards with useless ‘Help’ functions? Immediately after removing the keyboards from the packaging, I *literally* break off the F1 or Help key.
The *only* time F1 is ever useful is when one is running Linux/OpenBSD/FreeBSD, etc. locally and one needs to switch betwixt consoles using the keyboard and not remotely.
Thanks for the person who pointed out how the legs increase carpal tunnel.
Another use for the Scroll lock key that I didn’t see mentioned is that in Pop Peeper you can have the option of setting the scroll lock to flash when you get a new message.
It’s really an effective alternative to a sound alert. I wonder why not many programs use it?
I love the numlock key. Until I read this article, I was wondering how to make scrolling more comfortable.
Like one of the posters mentioned, numpad scrolling feels more natural.
I have my thumb set to the down arrow key, index finger on 4, middle on 8 and ring at 6. Feels way more comfortable scrolling through lots of webpages now. An additional bonus is how close the num lock key is on the numpad for an easy switch.
It seems pretty clear to me that this guy’s perfect keyboard is none other than the Mac Keyboard :-) Ok, it has the backslash key on top of the enter key. But it doesn’t have legs, it has sound control, it is not cream colored and it is just a design beauty. Plus, it has two USB ports. I believe it is the best shaped keyboard ever. Pair it with the Mighty Mouse and everything looks to darned good!
Agree with pretty much everything but its you can’t really complain about the lack of standardisation of keyboards and list all the changes you’d like to see at the same time.
I write programs for CNC machine tools. I use notepad because the machine controls will only read an ASCII text file. there can be no lower case characters. You whiny assholes succeed in getting the caps lock key deprecated I will have to keep an old keyboard alive until I get old enough to retire. A pox on you all.
You’re right. I bought recently a cool slim, retro-iluminated keyboard… and the keys were getting stuck all the time… and the letters started to disappear. Then I bought a wireless keyboard/mouse… and had to replace mouse batteries every week.
Now I got back my old BTC9000A that looks like a Commodore 64 computer. I never had a problem with that old, cheap keyboard. It’s ugly, it’s dirty, but it works wonderful.
Hey, those who hate the Windows key obviously don’t realize how useful it is. It is one of my favorite keys, especially Windows + R to get the Run dialog box and Windows + D to minimize all and show the desktop.
I can’t believe you forgot the Windows key! It is the bane of all evil!
[...] Not only true, but hilarious at the same time! Well I thought so. http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/28/10-reasons-keyboards-are-shit/ [...]
Since we’re ranting and speaking about not following standards, tell all the programmers out there and everyone they’ve mistakenly told, that there isn’t a “pipe” key, the character is called a “bar.”
Pipe is some made-up term by people who don’t know what the character is actually named.
And to that, dammit, there isn’t a forward slash. It just a slash and a backslash – no bloody forward slash. It’s like Virginia and West Virginia, there is no East Virginia.
Argh!
You pretty much sum up all my gripes about the keyboards I’ve had the last few years — about six or seven, I’d estimate.
I’m currently using Microsoft Wired 500; it’s solid, good-sized, no F-lock, and the multimedia keys I can live with (I need a mute and volume button). Best keyboard I’ve ever had.
Hey, that’s my keyboard at the top! Or at least the style … one of the models (made by Microsoft no less) which actually suits my needs quite nicely. This is a good post and something a dinosaur like me can identify with.
I honestly don’t like how modern keyboards are fucking with the layout, I realize some of you prefer a diamond of arrow keys and you don’t use the insert key — but switching that stuff around is annoying and slows me down. If you want to save space on the keyboard (a word to manufacturers), then make the number pad detachable. I don’t know many people PROGRAMMING who use it.
As far as media keys: I could care less if they all drop off EXCEPT skip/pause/play/mute. I NEED those dammit, and they actually work (without extra software) on the filthy model pictured at the top.
I thought I was the only one who used BADGERSEX as a password……
Take a look at the new MS Natural Ergonomic 4000, it addresses many of your issues.
1. Some people like the layout of arrow keys in the pad, live with it.
3. The multimedia keys are configurable on most keyboards including the 4000
5. The 4000 is black.
6. It’s driver controlled, limitation of windows. Can’t do much about that.
7. No sleep button on the 4000
8. They brought back the old insert block. :) I hated that non-standard one too.
9. Some people don’t like the tilt, so they have to use legs to cater to both crowds.
10. F-keys are back to their old two-group configuration in the 4000
11. F-lock works with prtscrn on the 4000
12. 4000 is wired.
Not everyone wants the keyboard that you envision, so there are plenty out there. The 4000 seems to fit your needs better at least. I like it anyway.
Luckily, Mac users like myself use decent keyboards that are easy to use, beautiful to look at and dont get dirty.
Yet another reason to switch.
What you really need is a good, heavy, model M. Most of these things were made long before I was born, and they still work perfectly. A great place to get these is at Goodwill. It will cost you about a dollar.
If you get really lucky like me, you can snag an Omnikey 101 there. I paid a dollar for a keyboard that frequently costs more than $100 on ebay. It’s got loud keys, which give you a good sense of connection to the keyboard.
I can type way faster on the 101 than I can on any other keyboard. The only disadvantage is that you can’t re-arrange the letters (for Dvorak, yes I’m a dork) but that’s kind of nice, because then nobody asks to borrow your computer.
I think the biggest problem with modern keyboards, though, is that stupid ps/2 connector. What was wrong with 5-pin? Why did we need to switch from a large, sturdy plug to a small, bendable plug with a plastic tooth inside it that breaks? Better yet, we should have stuck with the ethernet-looking plugs from way back in the day.
Can’t argue with any of that, except – black keyboards do get dirty. Just as yuckily dirty as white or beige ones. It’s just you don’t get to notice it until it’s *really* bad :-(
The “Window” key… The little bastard that is neatly tugged between my alt and Fn keys… so I go and press it while playing wow and get ejected (lots of paging, waiting…) into Windows. What the heck do I need a stuuupid button to work the usless start menu? I am not against accessibility, sure, there are unfortunate people out there who can’t use a mouse. So make a keyboard available to them. Leave the general public alone with this shit! Of course, just branding keyboards with a Windwoes logo has nothing to do with it I guess…
The person responsible for this “new function” should be forced to run around Redmond with a burrowing wombat up his backside screaming “I am sorry” in a televised event!
Yeknom.
You need two shift keys for typing capitals when you are touch-typing.
You can’t type a capital Y using the left shift key for example.
I have to agree with the F-Lock key being a complete arse of a thing. When using dreamweaver, hitting F12 lets you preview your creation in a browser. Unless you have forgot to press F-Lock to turn it off, it’ll start printing whatever you have just made. And what is SysRq all about? I’m a computer engineer and i’m fucked if I know!
3 things you forgot:
1 Keyboards, for better or worse, still work better than any other means of input.
2.The famous QWERTY keyboard(which was designed to SLOW YOU DOWN) has become so culturally entrenched that all attempts at re-design have failed!
3. the symbols are different because that answers the different implementations of the English language!! For example, I learned to type in the US in the mid 1970s, at a time when the public schools were still teaching it on manual typewriters. At that time, if you needed to make a Pound Symbol for something priced in British Pounds, and you had a us version of the typewriter, you had to Cap L, back-space, -. Likewise, if you had the BRITISH version of the EXACT SAME TYPEWRITER and you needed a Dollar symbol for the US(or Canada, Austrailia, etc) you had to Cap S, backspace,/. and that was that, and always would be. consider where we came from!!!
Hilarious! And true. :-)
Nice! fuck all innovations by microsoft.. :D
Pretty good list for those who are stuck using most PC-centric keyboards. Say what you will about Apple’s marketshare, but it makes innovation so much easier when you don’t have to worry about every holdover from DOS. Also, the CAPS LOCK is unfortunatly useful for most people who work with databases, as it is much easier to use all caps (many database backbones are case sensitive).
This will never be read but here I am with my 2c.
REMOVE the Focking keys that you protest. It’s made my life so much better. Just pull them off!
2. certain legal documentation requires all capital letters. because there is no standard software for creating legal document, the constraint is placed onto the input device. hence, capslock.
4. pipe and slash are frequent keys in non-gui based operating systems. if you touch type, you don’t need an extra large enter/return key. You’re right about the differences though – it’s retarded.
10. you’re best not relying the function keys to refresh pages. I love the f5 refresh, but recent switching between browsers on multiple operating leaves you with a sour taste when you try to use f5 and it doesn’t refresh. Instead, rely on the software’s implementations for refresh, (ctrl-r/cmd-r). The f5 is so efficient though.. its a painful one.
and believe it or not, sitting back at the desk with the keyboard on the lap is more enjoyable without the wires!
Cheers and thanks for the laughs.