I am using a friend’s computer right now, and he has on more than one computer Logitech wireless keyboards (and mice) with an odd design feature I’d never seen before. I’m used to the special computer keys - Home and End, Page Up and Page Down, and Insert and Delete all being grouped somewhat together, or at least the corresponding pairs being somewhat close. On thes keyboards, the other pairs are grouped as expected, but the Delete key is double-length, occupying the space I’d expect Insert to occupy, and Insert is all the way in left field, next to Print Screen and Scroll Lock.
Any idea what the purpose of this design is? I have no idea why the Insert button would need to be removed from the normal flow of keyboarding?
On most OSes and programs, the “delete” key (the one not grouped with the main keys, which is usually called “backspace”) is forward delete (delete character to the right of the cursor)-- a very useful function on a relatively small key. The “insert” key, on the other hand, often does nothing at all.
Unless the user spends a lot of time at the Windows command line or with an app that uses Insert for a common function, having an easier-to-hit delete key probably outweighs the disadvantage of the “Ins” key being farther away. All else being equal, I’d certainly buy such a keyboard.
I guess that’s true but many applications use the Ins key to toggle “insert” mode, so that when “insert” mode is off, typing overtypes characters instead of inserting them. Word does this, for example, but I don’t know that I would say it’s an industry standard.
Yes, that’s the command-line function I was talking about, too. Based on my admittedly limited sample size, I’d claim that at least 95% of that time that mode is toggled, it’s done so by mistake by someone trying to reach the forward delete key. That would be an interesting thing to test, actually.
As of the latest version of Office, Word no longer does this. In Word 2007, the “Insert” key has been neutered, so far as I can tell, and you have to tell Word to go into overtype mode manually.
Speaking as someone who has enjoyed the “oh hey, where are my letters going?!” experience for most of my life (particularly when using laptops, whose keyboard layout appears to have been designed by consulting chicken innards or random number generators and on which the “Insert” key is easy to hit by mistake) good riddance. I’ve no use for the “Insert” key, but I could do with a larger “delete” key on occasion.
Edited to add: I had no idea that Insert could be used for copy and paste operations. It’s been my experience that most programs, at least on PCs, are quite happy with the Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V arrangement. Is there any difference between that operation and the Insert key ones (like the difference between “i” and “em” HTML tags or something)?
Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V have been the standard for copy and paste for at least 10 years. Drove me nuts in Quicken until they finally got with the program in 2006 or so.
That’s one set of keyboard commands, but Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, and Ctrl-V seem to be used more frequently IME.
I think the arrangement described makes sense. The insert key is used to change a setting, and the delete key is used by a lot of people in the course of regular typing.
Honestly, I knew about the Ctl-C and Ctl-V, but I always thought those were the old ones and the ctl-Ins and Shift-Ins were more “modern.” Shows how fossilized my brain is.
I think that the Insert ones were originally the Microsoft way of doing it, while control-C etc. (actually command-C, but same difference) were the Mac way. But eventually, for whatever reason, the Mac version caught on on PCs, but not vice-versa.
I recently bought a new Logitech wireless keyboard with this arrangement, and it wasn’t until I started using it that I realized it was different. I tried getting used to it for a few weeks, but since my main computer has the old layout, it was a pain in the butt. So I bought a new one with the right layout. It works great. (Unfortunately, I liked the mouse that came with the old one more.)
Anyone want a slightly used wireless keyboard/mouse?
I sometimes have to borrow someone’s mac laptop, and it has no insert key at all. Drives me nuts, because I use shift-insert for pasting all the time. It’s just how I roll. There’s also no delete, or rather backspace doubles as delete, which is kinda lame, but at least it’s there, unlike the incredible vanishing insert.
Also, there are no dedicated pgup, pgdown, home, or end buttons, you have to hit fn and the arrow keys. Quite annoying when you mouse with your left hand and sometimes like to scroll down webpages with pgup/down. You have to stop mousing and hold the damn fn key with lefty… grrr… Yet they have a second enter key on the damn thing, next to the space bar. WHAT THE F[del]UCK[/del]RICK, APPLE? Could you find a more useless extra key to shove on there in the limited space?
I mean, I understand stuff has to move around on a laptop, but this is just ridiculous. The broken PC laptop that mac is a temporary replacement for doesn’t have all these special keys in the normal keyboard grouping, but at least they’re all there as individual keys (even insert) and having them all in a column instead of a block is rather minor next to having to hit fn up arrow or whatever.
Don’t even get me started on only having a single button for the touchpad… Thankfully the USB mouse from the broken PC laptop works with that joke of a computer.
Logitech is always experimenting with keyboard layouts. So are most laptop engineers. I think its more marketing than anything else. My WAG is that they try different layouts hoping to be the next big thing and then sit back and watch the licensing cash come in when others want to use their patented layout. Logitech calls this current system PerfectStroke.
My WAG is that most users do some kind of multi-handed approach to copying/pasting text. The right hand uses the mouse to select the text they want to copy, while the left hand can do the CTRL-C/V/X combo. The right hand can stay on the mouse the whole time to select another window/find the appropriate insertion point, and the left can stay hovered over CTRL-C/V/X. The insert key being on the right side of the keyboard probably has something to do with it.
Personally, I’m either an all-keyboard or all-mouse copy/paster. I tend to either use the arrow keys to find what I want to copy, hold shift to move and select it, then copy in one fell swoop. Or, I’ll use the mouse to highlight, and right-click to copy. Rarely do I use the multi-handed approach, but I’ve witnessed its prevalence among co-workers for years.
To be honest, as long as I’ve been using a PC (17 years), I never even knew that Shift-Insert and Ctrl-Insert did anything.
At work we have one of those keyboards with the oversized delete key on a computer that runs a projector in a conference room. The person running the meeting logs in to their desktop & runs the dog & pony show, takes notes, whatever, using this communcal machine.
Nobody can type well on the damn thing. They changed the size & shape of both the backspace & the delete keys, and it screws up everything.
The Mac version was ubiquitous across all Mac applications plus the operating system (well, the Finder at least) as well, right from the start in 1984. At that time there was no unified “PC version” of much of anything. The two most popular PC applications were probably WordPerfect and Lotus 123. I don’t think they shared a single keyboard shortcut. WordPerfect was famous for arcane keystrokes that did not involve letter keys at all — instead everything was F3 or F8 or Shift-F9. Lotus 123 was “hit the [color=red]/[/color key and then the first letter of the relevant command”
In the early Windows days, some Windows apps had carry-overs from the old DOS world, including the first versions of Office apps, with keystrokes like Alt-Shift-F4 and so on, but after awhile the PC world standardized on Mac-style shortcuts except using Ctrl instead of ⌘ which of course was a key they did not have.
