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The Keyboard from Hell

bruto

Penultimate Amazing
bruto
Joined
Jun 7, 2005
Messages
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Way way north of Diddy Wah Diddy
I suppose it's bound to happen as people become more and more graphic and less and less able, much less inclined, to type, but I just started using a newer laptop computer, because my older one has gotten a bit slow, and it works not badly, Vista notwithstanding, but I noticed I often accidentally hit wrong keys and lose big blocks of text.

It's not the first time I've noticed that HP and Compaq are particularly bad at this. I once had a Compaq desktop keyboard with a spacebar so small you had to stop and look for it among the other spurious buttons. Now here's this HP laptop, with arrow keys placed so that it almost guarantees that you need to look at the keyboard in order to avoid them. I just marvel that people who actually make these things apparently don't bother to try typing on them.

Not really much reason for this post except to rant. Rant rant. I'm a very verbal, keyboardy kind of guy. If you could make it all happen in Dos I'd still be using Dos. Pix follow of my older Dell keyboard, which works moderately well, and the HP:


dell keyboard.jpg

hp keyboard.jpg
 
I think most of my last nine laptops have kbs like that. Are you just slow on the uptake? :p


Ok, just kidding, let the ranting resume. :D

My current bitch is the widescreen HP I'm using has the touchpad offset to the left so it aligns better with the kb. Grrr.
 
Jim_MDP said:
My current bitch is the widescreen HP I'm using has the touchpad offset to the left so it aligns better with the kb. Grrr.
Click to expand...

Same here. My biggest complaint about my HP is that the power cord plugs in to the right side, about an inch from the screen edge. A real pain for a right-handed person who prefers using a mouse instead of a touchpad.
 
alfaniner said:
Same here. My biggest complaint about my HP is that the power cord plugs in to the right side, about an inch from the screen edge. A real pain for a right-handed person who prefers using a mouse instead of a touchpad.
Click to expand...

I think it was my HP that had the exhaust on the right side. Very nice to have HOT air spurting on your mouse hand. Plus, you HAD to use a mouse since the trackpad was crap.

Back to keyboards, my Macbook has a similar arrangement as the first photo. But, the cursor keys are much smaller. I never unintentionally hit them when typing, though currently I mostly use a full-size USB Apple keyboard (the flat aluminum one) with a number block. Which, BTW, for me, is the best keyboard I've ever had.
 
I do this all the time when typing on my current laptop. Suddenly, a block of text disappears, and I have no idea what I've done, as I type fairly fast. It's very frustrating since I'm an author and losing the last ten minutes of carefully-worded exposition makes me want to bang the laptop on my head. I also sometimes, somehow, realize that what I'm typing has been inserted into some random place in the previous text and I have to extract a block and replace it where it was supposed to be.
 
I'm used to the 3 x 2 edit block:

Insert | Home | Page Up
Delete | End | Page Down

However, many keyboards (Logitech, I'm looking at you) have that keypad set up this way:

Home | End
Delete | PgUp
| PgDn

  • The "Delete" key is extra tall, spanning the Page Up / Page down
  • The insert key if off somewhere else (okay, it's a small key above "Home", but I always have to look for it.)
It's a reasonable logical layout (Home to the left End), but I use muscle memory for all six keys in their standard arrangement. I'm used to Home being above End, and it really slows me down if I have to use a keyboard with the second arrangement, because every time I want to use one of those functions I have to pause and look to be sure I'm not about to hit the wrong key.

Or the following happens:
  • I want to shift from Insert to Replace mode and end up going to the start of the line because I hit the Home key. Now I have to find my position again and find the Insert key.
  • I want to go to the end of the line and end up in a totally different place because I just hit Page Down, or I just deleted something because I hit Delete. Now I have to figure out what I deleted, find my position again and go to the end of the line.
  • I want to Page Up and end up merely toggling the Num Lock setting

I've also seen one keyboard that changed the 12 function keys (F1 - F12) from three groups of four keys each into four groups of three keys each. That abomination was obviously designed by some ignorant hunt-and-peck hack from the marketing department "(because it looks cool!)" who had absolutely no Idea that some people can find F keys by feel alone.

There's a reason we have standards, even if they're only de facto and not formally defined by ANSI or ISO.
 
The laptop I was issued at work (that I have to use at my school) has the page up, shift, and question mark all incredibly close together. I can't count the number of times I have fat fingered a Shift-Page Up-? combo and completely replaced a document with a single question mark. I can undo it, of course, but it's incredibly confusing. It's also nearly impossible to type without accidentally interacting with the touchpad, which is just infuriating.
 
It's amazing how slight a difference in layout can be and be important. I'm plenty used to mistyping on the Dell keyboard (first one shown, with arrows lower down), and because I type largely blind and often in poor light, sometimes I realize I'm typing utter gibberish. On the HP (with the closer arrows and one right below the Enter key) most of the time it just puts the cursor in the wrong place, so I find I'm typing in the middle of my text, messing it up. I don't even know just what combination of keys I'm using to make whole blocks of text disappear.

The HP also has its power connection on the right side, where it is always in the way, and the button on the DVD player seems to be badly placed, so I'm accidentally opening it all the time.

This is one of those little things that make me wish sometimes that there really would be a hell. Not a big deal nasty one, but one in which, for example, the engineers of the International Scout would spend a few years doing nothing but replacing starters (a job that literally could not be done on a Scout without either pulling the engine or cutting a hole in the floor), and HP engineers would have to sit at those laptops and type fast in dim light.

Blue Mountain, you'd hate the HP keyboard. It has neither layout you show. Scroll, Pause Insert and Delete are on the top row right of the function keys, with Home, Page Down, Page up and End arranged vertically to the right of the regular keys.
 
Tiktaalik said:
I do this all the time when typing on my current laptop. Suddenly, a block of text disappears, and I have no idea what I've done, as I type fairly fast. It's very frustrating since I'm an author and losing the last ten minutes of carefully-worded exposition makes me want to bang the laptop on my head. I also sometimes, somehow, realize that what I'm typing has been inserted into some random place in the previous text and I have to extract a block and replace it where it was supposed to be.
Click to expand...

I had that problem on my Dell. I realized I was somehow brushing the Touchpad with the large palm muscle below my thumb. It selected text, deleted it, moved the cursor, and then started with whatever I was typing.

The hardest part was trying to find out how to turn the Touchpad completely off, no lie.
 
bruto said:
Blue Mountain, you'd hate the HP keyboard. It has neither layout you show. Scroll, Pause Insert and Delete are on the top row right of the function keys, with Home, Page Down, Page up and End arranged vertically to the right of the regular keys.
Click to expand...
Tell me about it. I have a Toshiba laptop, and it's almost as bad. Insert, Del, Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn are all in a row long the top,

With a laptop, whenever I can I use an external keyboard with all the keys in the positions where I prefer them, and an external mouse. That way I don't end up hitting incorrect keys in error, and issues caused by brushing the touchpad are eliminated.

At home, have my laptop raised a few centimetres above the desk, which improves screen viewability and provides increased protection from liquid spills.
 
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I don't know why some companies try to reinvent the wheel, or move buttons around for no reason, etc. I still press the Windows button by accident once in a while.
 
quadraginta said:
This would be a great thread to refer to when people ask why the world hasn't changed from QWERTY to Dvorak or something else.
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INdeed. I know I'll never know what the possible advantages of other layouts might be. I learned to type when I was 13 - took an after school course in a room full of great old manual Underwoods. I'm 66 now and that's one thing I'm not going to relearn. If I'm careful to establish the "home" positions before I start, and don't wander, I can type pretty accurately in the dark. It's Querty forever here.

By the way, bad as it is, one thing this HP does have is a hardware switch to turn off the touch pad, a nice feature. I use a wireless optical mouse which works well even on a chair arm or a knee.
 
alfaniner said:
I had that problem on my Dell. I realized I was somehow brushing the Touchpad with the large palm muscle below my thumb. It selected text, deleted it, moved the cursor, and then started with whatever I was typing.

The hardest part was trying to find out how to turn the Touchpad completely off, no lie.
Click to expand...

A piece of cardboard placed over the touchpad was my solution. And yes, it took me ages to realise my thumb was brushing the touchpad and moving the insert point.
 
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