Fuck you, you stupid ass 200 button keyboards.

The BBQ Pit
1

Lame rant ahead, but a rant nonetheless.

It seems over the years there’s been an arms race to increase the number of buttons on a keyboard by adding useless and harmful keys in place of normally spaced, useful keys.

When I bought this keyboard (at best buy, I think), out of the 10 or 12 keyboards they had, none had just a simple layout. All of the boxes proclaimed “105 keys!” “110 keys!” etc. as if stuffing all the keys you could onto a keyboard was indicative of quality.

I was just moving my keyboard, and I accidentally touched the MAGIC DEATH BUTTON on the top right of my keyboard that causes immeadiate system shut down. No prompting, no proper shut down, just turn the friggin computer off, not saving anything.

They made my control and alt keys small so that they could fit 2 start menu keys and a menu activating key. They serve no useful purpose, of course - you can easily achieve the same effect by by hitting alt-escape for the start menu, or hell, ALT (directions) for the menu activation. Yeah, they made the useful alt key smaller so that they could put in another key that accomplished one specialized task of the alt key. So, an extra alt key, but without all the usefulness.

Not only that, but often I’ll be playing a game, and accidentally hit a windows key button it’ll exit out of the game, and often, freeze them if they’re not alt-tab friendly. So, not only did they cram useless things in there, making useful buttons smaller, but it also causes more harm than it could possibly serve in usefulness.

Not only that, but I have another 2 start menu keys right under ‘delete’ and ‘page down’, as if the two by the alt keys weren’t enough. Yeah, 2 of the same key spaced just one apart from each other - how useful. In the middle, of course, is that menu activating key.

Hey, they might fucking hinder you, but at least the box can proudly proclaim 51258128521858218 buttons!

Sure, bitch at me and tell me to find another keyboard, and I may do that, but if I can’t find one fucking non-mutant-bullshit keyboard out of 12 at best buy, there’s something fucking wrong. I’m probably going to have to go to a little used computer shop and buy a keyboard out of their pre-1996 bin.

2

Happy Hacking Keyboard.

You can thank me later.

3

If this makes you feel any better, I’m typing this on an ancient, 84-key keyboard, and I love it. No F11, F12s, and the Caps Lock is where the Good God intended it, on the right side.

None of them newfangled 101-key boards fer me!

4

I actually found that an application of a small screwdriver under said offending keys to be a useful remedy. People look at me funny when they see the gaping holes in my keyboard, but my games are locked up unintentionally no more!!!

5

Those Windows keys bug the hell out of me too. Especially when I’m playing Doom and my finger hits a Window key instead of Alt when I try to strafe. I have a nine year old keyboard at home without Windows keys, but when that expires, what am I to do? I haven’t seen a normal keyboard for sale in ages.

6

Hie thee to a thrift shop or Goodwill store. They have bazillions of keyboards, usually quite old and outdated. They’ll probably trade you for your better one.

7

Does anybody use those natural keyboards with the weird shapes that used to be all the rage in the 90s? I don’t even see anything like them anymore - is OOS or RSI or whatever it’s called now, no longer a problem?

8

Yes.

I use the natural keyboard (sans Windows keys) at home. I find that I can type faster and more accurately on it, and I don’t experince “gamers claw” after playing a game for 10 hours straight.

I personally think that they’re popularity is waning due to the fact that they are quite a bit larger than a standard keyboard, and the trend is going towards smaller, more compact keyboards. I had to search quite a bit to replace my old natural keyboard when it died. Fortunately for me, Logitech makes a cordless natural keyboard that I absolutely love. Highly recommended for anyone who prefers them to the flat keyboards.

9

I’ve got 2 generic Compaq 101 key keyboards, which were probably some generic 3rd party before that. Never do I have to worry about menu popups in the middle of circle-strafing.

I recently purchased an HP Visualize workstation - it takes only USB keyboards, and despite the fact that the evil OS doesn’t even come close to running on the architecture, it looks like I shall be cursed with an MS presense at my fingertips. Perhaps iodine will help me.

10

I think we should all rebel and go back to the 1 button keyboard. DELETE.

11

You oughta try the laptop sized keyboard and round mouse that came with the G3 and early G4 Macs.

12

Yes, that looks so much easier to operate. I always wanted to have to set a dip switch to get caps lock on.

Y’all realize that you can disable the windows keys in XP, right? And on the power advanced settings (located, amazingly enough, under the “Screen Saver” tab of the display settings), you can tell XP to do bugger-all when the power button is pushed, right?

-lv

13

Have you seen the new Microsoft keyboards? They seem to be missing an Insert key, which is made up for, of course, by the BIGGEST DELETE KEY IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. Not to mention the 57 shortcut buttons above the Function keys that all share about 3 common purposes. Blech.

14

Three words. Three simple words.

IBM Type M.

The Western Electric dial phone of keyboards. Best damn input device ever made.

I wonder if anyone is using a Sun Type 6 Unix layout USB keyboard on a PC.

15

Priceguy, email me and I’ll send you a non-Windows keyed keyboard. (Did that make any sense?) I picked up a couple today, just because I could. You can reimburse me later for the shipping and handling if the thing actually works.

16

WHOA! The voice of reason! Kill me now!

17

Ooohhh I need one of those. I’d like to kill the dumbass who thought it would be a good idea to place this key next to tab. I hit the dumb thing all the time, and have to retype what I just typed.

Oddly enough, I never accidentally hit the windows key, and I used to game alot. Caps Lock is my own personal bane.

18

Wow. I really appreciate this. My mail server is acting up at the moment, but I’ll get back to you with my address.

I’ll have to get some stickers for the special Swedish characters (å, ä and ö), and also for basically every non-alphabetical character, but it’s so worth it. Whose bright idea was it to have !"#¤%&/()= on different keys on different continents?

19

After six months, I’m finally getting used to the funky keyboard arrangement on my laptop. I just hate that there’s an extra column of buttons on the right side of the damn thing. All too often, I’ll jab at the backspace key and hit it and the home key at the same time.

My mother bought a new Microsoft keyboard to plug into her laptop. The first she used it, she called me about ten times because the thing’s so damn complicated. The function keys have Microsoft’s functions written on the surface of the keys; the actual F# is written on the front side in small print. You have to hit another key to lock it into the function mode to use the keys when you’re in a non-Microsoft program. Come to think of it, I think all of the keys have double uses. I’m giving my mom my old HP keyboard to use. It’s a lot less trouble.

20

They don’t call them special characters for nothing.

PS: You’ll probably need a large to small style keyboard connector adapter for this one. It’s got the older large pin-out structure.

[afterthought]

HEY! I just realized that maybe you’re in Sweden and could send me some of that ‘North Sea Oil’ super-killer-diller-salmiak whup-dee-doo insane licorice I’ve been hearing so much about. Whadda-ya-say? Licorice for an old style keyboard?

[/afterthought]