This has been bugging me for a while, so I’d thought I’d rant and get it out of my system.
My laptop has a great keyboard. The keys are all in the right places, and they’re of a reasonable size, which means that my success rate is pretty good. I like it.
My laptop is an exception.
I’ve seen some crazy laptop design in my time, and it’s usually the keyboards that get hacked to hell. The first thing that goes is the placement and arrangement of the Insert-Home-Pgup Delete-End-PgDn keys. Some laptops put them in a line down the side – who’s idea was that? But by far the worst error I’ve seen is on the wife’s laptop. Now – my wife, she loves her laptop. And it’s a nice piece of kit. But what evil being, who should be consigned to the mental hospital for the remainder of his days, decided that a great place to put Home and End was on the same keys as PageUp and PageDown, requiring the use of a Function key to access them?
Crazy, I tell you.
mrBen
You are quite right. I also cannot stand most laptop keyboards. The biggest problem I find is that I’m used to a slanted keyboard, though it is incredibly annoying that there is no standard way of laying out the keys past the standard letters and numbers.
My Compaq had (still has, but it’s no longer my compaq) a great keyboard which I loved because it had the keys in the same position as a ‘normal’ keyboard.
My current laptop has a setup like your wife’s (the PgUp/Down, Home/End are on the spaces left by the arrow keys), but I don’t find it that bad. With this layout I can use those keys keeping my hand much closer to the home position.
What I can’t stand are those that have the extra keys on the side going down.
I’m looking to buy a notebook with the keys in all the right places (I like using the insert-home-delete… keys without looking) so I searched the web and found this post. Can you guys tell me the models of your laptops? Thanks.
I have an IBM (Lenovo now) Thinkpad T41. AFAIK all Thinkpads have full keyboards (and no Windows key)