Lenovo Tinkers With Larger Delete and Escape Keys 586
Slatterz writes "After a year's research, Lenovo boffins have decided the time is right to install 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. What convinced them to make the size-change was doing some tests on users to see which keys they use the most. They found that on average, people used the Escape and Delete keys 700 times per week, yet those were the only non-letter keys that Lenovo hasn't made any bigger." The article says Caps Lock may be next on the agenda; death is too good for Caps Lock.
Caps lock will be the end of unintended shouting (Score:5, Insightful)
Location, location, location (Score:5, Insightful)
I am happy to see some thought go in to "routine" matters like this -- too often I feel that laptop keyboards have abominable designs, such as shrunken space bars and control keys, miniscule arrow keys, or nonstandard placement of arrow keys, etc.
However, I would say the esc enlargement on my Lenovo is unneeded -- its location above the other keys means it is struck accurately. I would venture to say the same for the delete key, which I could locate with my eyes closed by its characteristic placement. I think the aesthetics of the vertical extension of these keys is going to be negative.
For my money, I wish they would just lay off the IBM keyboard design. Thinkpads should not have a Windows key. :)
Re:Caps lock will be the end of unintended shoutin (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, the key to the left of "A" should be Ctrl. That is one think about the OLPC XO-1 keyboard I like. The actual keys are crap, though.
They had laptops or typewriters with function and modifier keys in the 19th century?
Apple losing a golden chance (Score:4, Insightful)
If Lenovo is going to do it - Caps Lock will die a death and no one will notice. It is better for the industry to let Apple do what it does best and let the Caps lock die at Apple's hand. They will sell a iCapsLock add-on for $30 to stir up things even further and the caps lock death will then be rightly celebrated by the loads of forum posts and bickering by people newly realizing how much they miss the Caps lock now that it is gone.
Bigger ENTER too!! (Score:2, Insightful)
I would like a bigger enter too, made so it takes more "vertical" space (somewhat relocating the \ key) like on some European keyboard layouts.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Incomplete statements (Score:5, Insightful)
"...They found that on average, people used the Escape and Delete keys 700 times per week..."
are meaningless unless they (Lenovo) tell us what type of keyboard layout the tested computers had or even what applications people used. By the way, who constituted what they refer to as "people?"
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:5, Insightful)
HP/Compaqs are probably the worst computers on the market today. I don't know why anybody would buy one. Horrible quality control and service, no XP drivers for any of the newer units...UGH! Lenovos are probably my favorites if for no other reason than the mouse "track point" nub thingy and they're still easily available with XP. I hope they tinker with smaller price tags some day.
Marketing Gimmicks & Flawed Analyses (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight.
The best way to improve keying accuracy is to create even more derivative keyboard layouts?
I'd guess the del key might even afford to be *smaller* as it is used more often and hence more easily remembered.
I would have had a bit more sympathy if the article had said they'd placed it in a more accessible location ala space bar (rather than off to one side of the main keymap).
Maybe they could create a "Lenovo" key to sit between the "Windows" key and a new "Dave was here!" key. Then I can loan them my 16 button hexdecimal mouse[1].
Xix.
[1] Otherwise known as a digitizing puck
Goldtouch Keyboard (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got a couple Goldtouch keyboards that have a great improvement: extra Delete and Backspace keys on the left hand side of the keyboard. It's very helpful when you've got your right hand on the mouse.
Also, Goldtouch moved the Windows and Right Click/Context Menu keys off of the main area into a separate space. Both of these are great improvements.
...largely unchanged since the 19th century? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahem. We still have 26 alpha and 10 numeric but about everything else has changed. Frequently. More like "largely unchanged since the 19th of June".
Re:Lenovo aren't the only ones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just out of curiosity ... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am torn. The new thinkpad T400s seems like a great machine, finally approaching the thin/light form factor of my beloved, obsolete T41. I had actually given up hope, and gone to the much smaller X200 out of disgust with the more recent, bloated T-series thinkpads. But this keyboard change is horrible and might put me off thinkpads if it spreads to their future lines. I hope they'll retain a "classic" keyboard layout option, along with the various international keyboards one can swap in.
I find the ESC key on my current (and previous) Thinkpads to be good, because it is located above the function keys almost all alone in the top corner. (The same row continues with smaller speaker volume buttons, empty space, power button, and finally the useless PtrSc, ScrLk, Pause keys, followed by the top row of the relocated Insert, Delete, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn block. The worst keyboard I ever used as a programmer was on a Dell laptop, where the backspace was shrunken and the home key was in a strange place. I finally had to map home to backspace so I would get the double-wide backspace and stop jumping to the top of files when I was trying to backspace.
On the previous thinkpads, it is already easy to hit ESC because you can use the vertical screen bezel as a backstop to whack your finger into the corner and then drop with gusto when necessary. But I also use the external USB format of the Lenovo thinkpad keyboard, and find it easy to use there without a backstop. (In fact, I solved my keyboard adaptation issues by using a thinkpad and an external thinkpad keyboard on my desktop, so the exact same input layout is used at all times, including the trackpoint "nipple mouse" which is my primary requirement).
Amusingly, I use emacs, not vi, but I also use ESC all the time because I learned to use it as my emacs meta key years ago in assorted DEC workstations and serial terminals. I bang out the sequences ESC-x, ESC-q, and ESC-@ with regularity in emacs.
Re:Kill the delete key (Score:3, Insightful)
Having to deal with many linux machines with command line programs running in multiple screen windows, havning no function keys would drive me insane. Actually, the fact that my N810 doesn't have them is annoying enough, but a real keyboard MUST have those keys!
I have a 16" lappy with a numpad on the right. Consequently, the number row (above qwerty) gets used for symbols more than numbers and my left little finger goes completely numb hitting that #*$#$@#$'ing shift key over and over and over and over again while programming. If they do anything, it should be removing capslock and making num-lock also toggle the number row (or have a second button to toggle them).
Re:Caps Lock Idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
i'm a senior software developer at a LAMP shop; i write a lot of SQL for ad-hoc queries and what-not. i capitalize SQL queries, even in my ad-hoc queries (it's a good habit to get into if only for readability), but i don't ever use the caps lock key. it is more efficient for me to hold down the shift key (which is closer to my pinky than the caps lock key) while continuing to type at the same pace than it is to stop and press and release the caps lock key. i suspect this is likely the case with most people who are able to type at any reasonable pace.
so, your example fails to convince.
the only reason i can see for keeping the caps lock key is for old and/or braindead systems that don't speak anything but uppercase.
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:3, Insightful)
Replacement KB: $10
Replacement touch screen: $700
Any other questions?
Nineteen Seventees/Eighties? (Score:3, Insightful)
Numlock, arrow keys, Alt, Control, Windows/Apple, f1 - f12, page up, page down, scroll lock, insert, home, end, Fn... etc, etc
The statement about the 19th century is a load of shit. I remember a wide variety of keyboards from the 1980s. Slightly increasing the size of the escape and delete keys is nothing compared to, for example, adding a numpad or adding a green "copy" key. What about those ergonomic split keyboards? Surely that would be a larger change to the nineteenth century design than making a couple of easy to find keys a bit bigger.
The summary is stupid, an insult to our collective intelligence. There is no news here, no stuff that matters. It is simply slashvertising for Lenovo about something which really isn't all that interesting.
Re:Lenovo aren't the only ones (Score:3, Insightful)
Home or End?
There's a much bigger problem with those keyboards - copy, cut and paste.
Seriously, remove the insert keys in favour of large delete keys, and only n00bs who only know of Ctrl+X/C/V can use them. People who grew up with computers two decades ago have long learned that Ctrl/Shift+Insert/Delete is an order of magnitude better and easier to use.
Ctrl key ctrl key ctrl key (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No need (Score:5, Insightful)
well, Ctrl + Alt + Del is still a lot useful on modern windows systems.
Except it doesn't give you the task manager. It gives you a fullscreen menu.
And while we're redesigning the keyboard, I want the backspace further from Enter. There are few things worse than sending a chat message you decided you don't want to send after all.
Re:Caps lock will be the end of unintended shoutin (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to do that. It gave me a pretty bad RSI (fingers and arms hurting day and night, even after quitting keyboarding for a week) when I switched from single-tasking DOS to multi-tasking Linux. I then switched caps and control and moved to Dvorak layout, which did improve things for me.
Re:No need (Score:3, Insightful)
They should swap Fn and Ctrl. I'm sure most linux/unix users would agree.
Re:No need (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Location, location, location (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No need (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No need (Score:3, Insightful)
I think his point was that the button needs to be removed, or removed from where it is, not that the function itself be eliminated.
It's interesting to hear all the arguments about NumLock, CapsLock, PrintScreen, Pause/Break, ScrollLock, etc. Nearly everybody sees that one key is useless, while their "preferred" key is quite useful, or the best thing since sliced bread.
All of those keys have essentially been repurposed by programmers. Scroll Lock would seemingly not have a purpose, yet it lives on in KVM systems *precisely* because it has no purpose. How long has it been since the Pause/Break key actually did a "Pause"? I would bet that the Break part is mostly used in Linux/Unix environments or the command line, although Ctrl-C seems to be a working substitute 99% of the time. Most games in the past were paused with the P key. PrintScreen seems to only have a single purpose used by some, but still gets premium space allocated. CapsLock is just fucking stupid where it is, as big as it is.
I think we can all agree that the keys have their use by a minority of people and just can't be removed willy nilly.
So why not just make them 1/5th of the size of regular keys and move them to the topmost part of the keyboard? While were at it, add a Ctrl-Alt-Del key there too. Most keyboards, like my Logitech, already have all the function keys 1/3-1/2 the size of regular keys. Considering that they are not used that often even by the minority that uses them, I say make them much much smaller and get them off the "high frequency" part of the keyboard.
Absolutely, get rid of the Windows key and the pop-up menu key while were at too. Move those up with the group and make the Ctrl and Alt keys bigger again. I think we all use them more often than the Microsoft centric keys.
The real problem is that we could all probably colloborate on a hell of keyboard that would suit all of our needs. Unfortunately, the manufacturers still have dipshits working for them that actually had the gall to put a "shopping" key on some keyboards.
It's that backwards compatibility mantra, or something like doctrine:
A) "Let's get rid of the CapsLock key" .... fucking crazy"
B) "Well that's just
A) "It's hardly ever used anymore and we could put something more useful there, maybe even increase the size of other keys"
B) "Well you can't"
A) "Why"
B) "Because you just can't. It's always been there. My daddy had it, my daddy's daddy had it. My son will have it. Just STFU"
I love the fact that there are some people at Lenovo that have the balls to push out a new design.
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems like in general, people tend to talk a lot louder on the cellphone than person vs person, and I think it's mostly that people are irritated by.