Can I use a Canadian laptop in th U.S.?

Factual Questions
21

I was looking into the Canadian Multilingual Keyboard (CMK) more. It’s basically the “International English” keyboard, as described on this Apple page, with a couple of squillion shiftable characters. They came along in the PC world around three years ago, after I had bought a Mac, so I wasn’t familiar with them.

Looking at the linked page, and comparing the International English and the US English keyboards, you can see the two main physical differences:

  1. The right enter key is tall and narrow, rather than low and wide as it is on the US keyboard. This basically takes the backslash/vbar key and moves it down and to the left, to sit in place of the left side of the US enter key.

  2. There is an extra key occupying the space used by the right end of the left shift key on the US keyboard. On the International English keyboard described in the Apple page, this key appears to be the back tick/tilde key; I think on the CMK it has different characters.

The other part of this is that there are additional symbols on many of the keys. There are available when the right ALT key is pressed–but only sometimes.

Apparently, some keyboard mappings separate the left and right ALT keys and allow each one to give access to a different set of shifted characters. I’m not sure which settings allow this, though.

I still think it’s a good idea to have the extra symbols on the keyboard.

However, looking into this more, I find a confusing and ill-named set of Windows keyboard mappings and layouts outside the US ASCII keyboard. There’s a Canadian French keyboard which is not the same as the CMK. And in a google image search, I see both the Canadian French and Canadian Multilingual keyboards referred to as “Canadian Multilingual”. I remember that there was a Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard mapping, but I’m not sure whether it’s the same as the hardware keyboard.

On the Mac, there is no hardware CMK. There’s a Canadian English and a Canadian French keyboard mapping, but apparently those are both ‘legacy’ and don’t support Unicode. Which I need. So I use the US Extended keyboard mapping and Option-Command-Shift my way through life.

What I would like to see is an available CMK mapping for the Mac with proper Unicode support, paired with the International English keyboard hardware (with the keycaps as on the Windows machines.)

Here’s a Microsoft page about adjusting your keyboard settings. I hadn’t really thought about how confusing it can be when each program has its own keyboard setting–it would make more sense for that to be set on a per-user basis.

22

The keyboard on my Lenovo is absolutely US standard. I could have chosen the French Canadian (not the same as the French) keyboard, but didn’t. Also you can install it in software, but the keycaps would be wrong. I never use the right Alt key, so I don’t know if it has a different effect from the left Alt.

One difference is that some YouTube clips will not work in Canada, but I think they detect my IP address. I used to watch clips from Jon Stewart and then one day I got the message that these are not allowed in my area. WTF?

As far as the slanging match, I was getting more and more agitated and then said, “What the hell am I supposed to do?” I swear that “hell” was the word I used, nothing stronger. At that I got, “Thank you for calling Dell. Click.” Some goddamned evangelical type. Fuck him and fuck Dell too for hiring him.

23

Yes but it sounds funny when the computer says reboot.

24

When it does, they have different labels. For example, Spanish (international) keyboards do, and the left alt is labelled Alt (and it’s the one which is used in keyboard shortcuts or to enter symbols using their altcode) while the right one is labelled Alt Gr (it triggers the second set of symbols associated with a key, for example altgr+e produces €).

25

When you turn on the computer for the very first time, you will probably be asked which version of Windows (English or French) you want to use. This choice is permanent. If you choose English, you will get the same experience as with a US model, except for the physical layout of the keys (maybe).
You may also have some trouble getting service from Sony USA later on.

26

I will echo concerns with the bilingual keyboard. I got one with my HP and it SUCKED. The enter key was in the wrong place and something on the left was also not quite right. After years of counting on the keys to be in the right place, I couldn’t get used to it.

I had to spend another fifty bucks or whatever on a new bluetooth keyboard. There’s no option to not get the bilingual keyboard.

27

This Canadian also hates it when sitting in front of a French keyboard. I want to add though, this has happened exactly once in my career. Perhaps in Québec the prevalence of French or multilingual keyboards is higher. But every laptop at (let’s say) our local Best Buy is indistinguishable from any of those I’ve seen in Best Buy in the States.

Slightly more frequently I’ve seen Windows configured to provide easier inputting of French characters using a standard keyboard. In those cases it’s pretty straightforward to disable that, to put things back to “normal”

So, my wonderful American friends… rush out today and buy Canadian laptops/computers/bagels… our economy thanks you!

28

What are you talking aboot?

29

All the computers at my department sport the Canadian French keyboard (i.e. this one). It seems to be the standard one here. I see the multilingual keyboard only once in a while.

My laptop has a US English physical keyboard (similar but not exactly identical to this) but I’ve set my computer to use the Canadian French keyboard. Notice that there are differences in physical layout between both keyboards. This means that the key marked <>} just left of the Enter key on the Canadian French keyboard is moved above the Enter key on mine, while the key with the French quotes, left of z on the Canadian French keyboard, is nowhere to be found on mine. This is a mild annoyance, since while some word processing programs can change the English quotes (which are on my keyboard) into French quotes, Gmail doesn’t.