Wudang
BOFH
Madness. I have 2 laptops and my daughter has one and I'm always hitting PgUp instead of Home etc as they're mapped differently on different machines. That's some if the worst design I've ever seen.
Dear Users… (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people) Part 10
- Thread starter TragicMonkey
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Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
Wow. The one I'm on at the moment has it top right corner, which is fine.
What is that key 2nd from left on the top row? Because the icon on it looks similar to the one I was trying to describe in the fat-finger thread.
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Turns on and off external monitor output.
catsmate
No longer the 1
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An unpleasantly common change.
Blue Mountain
Resident Skeptical Hobbit
Yes, that a that's a massively stupid idea. Putting an otherwise normal button on the keyboard that can seriously affect your current workflow is insane.
Mind you, I hate most laptop keyboard layouts and always use a USB connected keyboard with a standard layout.
As for mitigations, is it possible to tweak Windows so that pressing that button at least pops up a dialogue box? I know Windows has an option for change what the power button does, but the options many be limited to sleep/hibernate/power off. There might be a registry hack or even third party software to help.
Blue Mountain
Resident Skeptical Hobbit
Also, putting the Insert key four buttons away from the Delete key?? In fact, with the Power Off button right beside the Delete key, where I might normally expect Insert to be, borders on criminal. Boy has HP gone downhill since the days of the 15C and 16C calculators (which, admittedly, was 40 years ago!)
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
HP laptops are made by a third party bulk factory and simply rebadged. As do most laptop vendors. So you can quite possibly find an almost the identical (insane) keyboard layout and functionality in some other brand, just with a different colour scheme and badge.
Blue Mountain
Resident Skeptical Hobbit
That does not appear to be the case. Here's one reference I found among many:
Where Does HP Build Its Laptops? [ponfish.com]ponfish.com said:
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
I would take that with a grain 9f salt. For example, it says HP spun off its PC business as HPE. Nope. HPE is the non PC stuff - Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Had a quick look and you should be able to alter what it does with a single click i.e. shutdown/sleep/hibernate - at least if it only puts it into sleep mode it will wake up quick and nothing will be lost. But yes that has to be one of the most stupid design decisions I've ever seen on a laptop.
I’d say you had a case for returning them as unfit for purpose.
Wudang
BOFH
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
commandlinegamer
Philosopher
Not to mention the design from a few years ago which had another row of keys to the left of those normally at the extreme left. I've got one in at the moment, and the bottom-left key is not CTRL, but a calculator shortcut.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
Ugh.
I know our IVR system is not unclear. I know that because I recorded all of the voice prompts. What you're hearing when you dial our number is literally my voice. And it is very, very clear. We even have a "for all other IT issues, press 4" prompt and people still come through on the wrong line saying "I couldn't work out what number to press for my IT issue".
I know our IVR system is not unclear. I know that because I recorded all of the voice prompts. What you're hearing when you dial our number is literally my voice. And it is very, very clear. We even have a "for all other IT issues, press 4" prompt and people still come through on the wrong line saying "I couldn't work out what number to press for my IT issue".
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
I was laughing about the power button thing then I realized I have no idea where the power button on my work laptop is. I kid you not it took me ten actual minutes to find it: it's a very slender silver button with a light on it, nestled top left of the keyboard in a groove that appears to be purely aesthetic in purpose. I'd never actually used it, I always power down by telling Windows to shut down, and power on again by hitting the power button on the docking station. It's HP also, but the only issue it has is overheating when the video camera is in use.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
What the heck are you filming??!
Wudang
BOFH
Think. Is this a question you want to be asking TM?
Ok now you got me curious. Let me just put my therapist on danger money.
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
On my work laptop? Nothing interesting. My department is required to have our cameras on during Teams meetings, in order to "increase engagement". By which they mean they suspect us of goofing off during calls. But Microsoft Teams seems to be rather hardware-intense and seizes way more of the memory than you'd expect, and when the video is in use the fans kick on high and quite fail to do sufficient cooling: an hour on a video call gets one corner of the laptop significantly hot to the touch. I'm sure it's aging the machine rapidly but it's not my property and not my policy so I'll just have to get new laptops faster than should be necessary.
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