Lenovo increases size of panic buttons
CHINESE outfit Lenovo has decided that we all need bigger panic buttons on our laptops.
After a year's research, Lenovo boffins have installed larger Delete and Escape keys on their updated ThinkPad laptop T400s range.
While it is a small change, it is fairly radical to tinker with an area of hardware which has been largely unchanged since the 19th century.
The change is based on testing users on which keys they use the most. On average, they used the Escape and Delete keys 700 times per week, yet those were the only non-letter keys, that hadn't been made bigger.
Lenovo decided to make these two keys about twice as long in the vertical direction to fit the way people reach up for them.
Apparently the next keyboard evolution could be the death of the caps lock. It comes from the days when you wrote headings in capitals but these days exists only to be accidently pressed, stuff up passwords, or make you shout online.
Still any innovation that Lenovo can come up with would be better than the latest genius software update it pushed on users. It fills your screen with annoying pop-up ads for Lenovo products and it can't be switched off . µ
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Funnily, I popped capslock out of my keyboard at work for the exact reasons mentioned in the article. It can be useful occasionally, but then it should be near the other rarely used keys such as scroll lock, num lock, print screen and pause/break.
Maybe capslock should replace the spacebar on One-Laptop-Per-Child machines. Those computers are made for noobs, and noobs always use capslock a lot! ^^
But I like caps lock - I remap it to control, and it works brilliantly.
What they need to do is swap the FN and Ctrl keys. I won't buy a computer if the FN key is in the bottom left of the keyboard. Drives me up the wall.
Good move! Now put the DEL key besides the cursor keys like on those old Toshiba laptops and you'll have a buyer!
Oh, I forgot: Put the Ctrl key in the lower left corner, damnit!
Who uses the escape that much?
What did they do, ask a bunch of vi users?
"While it is a small change, it is fairly radical to tinker with an area of hardware which has been largely unchanged since the 19th century."
I think you'll find that 19th Century typewriters had neither an Esc, nor a delete key.
Most of them didn't even have zero or one, you used a capital O and lower case L instead.
All laptop keyboards are slightly different, and having a couple of keys made slightly larger (but remaining where you expect them) is nothing compared to having to use a US keyboard with quote and at symbol swapped over!
Can't they include an 'Any' key.
Some of the software i use keeps asking me to hit this......