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.
No need (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No need (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
...and since the ctrl-alt-delete keys are so often used in Windows PC's, why don't they regroup them to their own region of the keyboard? In fact, why not combine them into a unique oversized (and possibly bright red) "panic button"? But I digress... keyboards should reflect progressive user habits; not the failings of the operating system they control.
Key size is not the only pre-90's "tradition" that has to go - the "num lock" key is rather pointless for most desktop users - the numeric pad has been an in
Re:No need (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No need (Score:5, Funny)
Waaay back when, in the days of the glory of DOS, I transitioned a programmer from a terminal to a PC. He only had one arm. When telling him how to reboot, his response was "Oh that's just fucking great." He had to use a pencil in his mouth.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Are you insane? NumLock is autorun on most MMOs, you'd force people playing WoW to actually press and hold a button on the keyboard!
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Can you explain that? I am just racking my brain here and I don't see how a numeric keypad and a "frenchman" relate. My curiosity demands an answer..... please? I don't think I can sleep without the answer.
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...the "num lock" key is rather pointless for most desktop users - the numeric pad has been an integrated part of most all desktop keyboards since decades...
Do you even know what NumLock is for? It's to allow you to toggle your numeric keypad between numbers and positioning keys (arrows, PgUp, etc.).
As the user of a laptop with a numeric keypad (one of the reasons I bought the unit), I happen to find NumLock extremely useful. If you really don't care for its presence on your keyboard, I'll be happy to loan you a pair of pliers.
Re: (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 s
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They should swap Fn and Ctrl. I'm sure most linux/unix users would agree.
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No, not really. Most of us just remap the keys how we want them. It has the added bonus of confusing people trying to use out terminals.
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Or you can learn to use a machine and stop doing things that they cannot do. That may be the first step in solving your crash problem.
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:No need (Score:5, Informative)
CTRL + SHIFT + ESC brings the task manager without bringing up the fullscreen
Re:No need (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
it calls the almighty Task Manager to lay its hammer of destruction on the deviant criminal processes that are locked down.
You don't need Ctrl+Alt+Del for that. Ctrl+Shift+Esc will start the Task Manager directly, without the extra screen.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Command Key was used for those sorts of things long before Windows 95 introduced the windows key.
Also, it is in the same position as the Alt key on a PC keyboard.
Re:No need (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No need (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No need (Score:5, Funny)
If the origin of the word is from an old LISP machine, shouldn't it be the "Thuper Key"?
Re:No need (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No need (Score:5, Funny)
Real Men use ^H.
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I could really use the CAPS LOCK key taken off. Completely.
I'm not sure why it's usually placed to the left of the "A" key at all. I've never used it in 3 decades of experience, except by accident. Hello?
The FIRST thing I do to a computer that I have to use for any length of time at all is turn off CAPSLOCK and make it a control key, unless the keyboard is sensible like a Sun keyboard.
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Caps lock will be the end of unintended shouting (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Caps lock will be the end of unintended shoutin (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm using a Dragon 32, you insenstive clod
I've been collecting vintage computer hardware for the last few months, and I gotta say, my Tandy CoCo3 (128K version) has by _far_ the best keyboard of any of the 8 or 16-bit machines I've used. I never used one back in the day, so the mint condition one I just got last month _really_ surprised me with the keyboard feel. I also got a Tandy 102 that was still in its unopened box. :)
Back to the subject of keyboards, though, to say noone has been messing with the layout of keys is to be completely unaware of computers of the last several years. Certainly there's a small player in the industry called 'Microsoft' that has been making some fairly commonly found keyboards that have the keys normally found above the arrow keys to be arranged in strange and remarkably unpleasant ways. I'm pleased to say the latest entry in their 'Natural' line has returned those keys to the proper position - the MS Natural 4000 keyboard not only unbreaks the keyboard layout changes they made in previous keyboards, but also returns the tilt to the correct location - the front, not the back (which actually makes things WORSE ergonomically). Plus it's available in beautiful, beautiful black. :)
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?
Re:Caps lock will be the end of unintended shoutin (Score:5, Informative)
How else would they use vi and emacs?
Re:Caps lock will be the end of unintended shoutin (Score:4, Funny)
They had laptops or typewriters with function and modifier keys in the 19th century?
Yeah, of course!
What do you think Ada Lovelace, the first programmer, used to code with?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More like pen and paper.
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Why? Because some obsolete VT-52 or obscure Wyse terminal had it there? What are you going to do with the right ctrl key if you move the left one above the shift key? Place it above the right shift key where the enter key is? Or perhaps you'd leave the right ctrl key where it is and have an asymmetric modifier key layout?
No, the real problem with keyboards is the NumLock key. The number keys and cursor control keys should never have been allowed to mix.
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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.
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It hurts to hunt CTRL from the fucking corner. Better have both. Capslock is useless, either kill the fucker or hide it behinf FN-this or that.
I have capslock mapped as CTRL on my ubuntu boxes and on my mac - matter of clicketi-click via preferences.
The really real problem: no use of the thumbs (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the real problem with keyboards is the NumLock key.
Really? It's never a problem for me.
I think the really really real problems of keyboards are:
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Maybe I didn't use it enough, but I always had trouble typing on one of those SUN keyboards with a few crucial keys in different places.
Sun does a couple other dumb things though, like make backspace 5 times harder to hit.
The ctrl-caps switch is really the only thing right about those keyboards.
I don't know what I'd want in its place, because for Windows typing, the common CTRL functions (X,S,V,C) are all easiest as LCTRL chords, and anchoring your left pinky to where Caps lock is to type these I think feel
Re:Caps lock will be the end of unintended shoutin (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a Lenovo T400 and the placement of the DEL key always annoyed me. I use a program called KeyTweak (http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/) to remap my lenovo keyboard as follows:
Right CTRL key is DEL
Those silly keys to the right and left of the up arrow are HOME and END
And finally, drum roll please... the CAPS key is mapped to the TAB key so I have a gigantic space to mash my chubby fingers when looking for a tab stop!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The original function of Caps Lock is nuisance. If you are on Windows you can set Caps Lock to do an actually useful thing which makes your life a whole lot easier:
http://lifehacker.com/5278802/iswitchw-finds-windows-as-you-type [lifehacker.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
and, more importantly, reduce calls during your off hours because a user locked out his/her account due to CAPS LOCK being on when entering a password.
Give them Vista - it helpfully warns with "OMG WTF CAPS LOCK!!!" at login screen when it sees it on.
Then again, when the user cannot login, that's 1 problem. Once they can, be sure that there will be many more - so why call it upon yourself?
And make intended shouting much harder! (Score:5, Funny)
Caps lock will be the end of unintended shouting
I would like you to meet my friend, Khassaki:
<Khassaki> HI EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!
<Judge-Mental> try pressing the the Caps Lock key
<Khassaki> O THANKS!!! ITS SO MUCH EASIER TO WRITE NOW!!!!!!!
<Judge-Mental> fuck me
(From http://www.bash.org/?835030 [bash.org])
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: (Score:3, Informative)
For my money, I wish they would just lay off the IBM keyboard design. Thinkpads should not have a Windows key. :)
Yes, absolutely. Lenovo's biggest mistake is tarnishing the ThinkPad keyboard with a 'doze key. The second biggest mistake is making (almost) all ThinkPads shortscreen, but my understanding is that they were essentially forced down that path by their suppliers.
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Re:Location, location, location (Score:4, Funny)
Agreed. I'm boycotting Apple until they bring back the closed Apple key.
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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
Re:Kill the delete key (Score:5, Funny)
--.- . -..
Re:Location, location, location (Score:4, Informative)
But that doesn't make it OK for Apple to screw up the keys in the first place.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can "correct" the behavior of Home and End on a Mac by placing the following in ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict :
{ /* home */ /* end */ /* shift + home */ /* shift + end */
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:";
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
}
So conflicted... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So conflicted... (Score:4, Funny)
Nineteenth Century (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nineteenth Century (Score:5, Funny)
Show me a keyboard that even HAD the Delete or Escape keys, idiot. Hell, when I learned to type, you had to use a lowercase L for the digit 1, and a capital O for the digit zero. Exclamation point was "apostrophe, backspace, period."
You had backspace? I had to disconnect the carriage and slide it to the left.
Re:Nineteenth Century (Score:5, Interesting)
You had backspace? I had to disconnect the carriage and slide it to the left.
Ah, yes, life before backspace erasure. Keypunches. Flexowriters. Baudot teletypes.
I have this Teletype Model 15 keyboard [wikipedia.org]. (That exact keyboard; the picture in Wikipedia is of my machine. Yes, I need to machine a new space bar.) Each key has a travel of about half an inch, and produces not just an audible "click", but a "whir-chunk" as the keyboard encoder, which is a mechanical device with cams, does a parallel to serial conversion. There's a speed limit; once you've pressed a key, you can't press another one until the encoder is finished. There is no key rollover, but you can't push two keys at once because the encoding mechanism prevents it. There are 32 keys, since this is a five bit code and they're all used. There are two shifts, FIGS and LTRS. The keyboard just sends those; it itself has no notion of shifting.
There's one unused key, the "blank key", which sends the all ones character. My software for the machine uses that as backspace, typing a "/" followed by the letter just deleted. The machine itself has no backspace capability. So you can't backspace too much, or you hit the right margin, for which I delete the whole line.
This is 1930s technology. There were printing telegraphs and stock tickers back to 1870, so electrical keyboards do go back to the 19th century. Edison had a machine with a semicircular keyboard (not for ergonomics; the keys radiated out from the center of a round machine). Linotypes (which, amazingly, appeared in 1886) had entirely electrical keyboards, with separate keys for upper and lower case letters.
Teletypes loosely followed the Underwood typewriter layout because the Model 12 Teletype (the first one that worked well enough to deploy, from 1921) was a heavily modified Underwood typewriter. Computer keyboards since then have a direct line of descent from the original Morkrum Model 12, through decades of Baudot machines, and into the ASCII era.
Re:Nineteenth Century (Score:4, Funny)
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 coupl
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.
caps lock (Score:5, Funny)
Re:caps lock (Score:5, Funny)
mOD PARENT UP!
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: (Score:3)
I would like a bigger enter too, made so it takes more "vertical" space (somewhat relocating the \ key) like on some European keyboard layouts.
Then you are a fool. How could you possibly miss the already enormous enter key? No, far far far more infuriating is when you go to type a | or a \ and you accidentally hit the stupidly enlarged enter key which has consumed the proper place for the \| key. To add insult to injury, in this braindead keyboard design, the \| key typically consumes the left half of where backspace is supposed to be, meaning you'll accidentally hit enter instead of \|, and then you'll go to correct your mistake and then you'll a
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:Incomplete statements (Score:5, Funny)
By the way, who constituted what they refer to as "people?"
Vi users of course.
Re:Incomplete statements (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
who constituted what they refer to as "people?"
Soylent Green
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.
Changed Keymap layouts (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, there's oodles of room for real improvements.
I love Sun Type5 keybards because the cut/paste & front/back keys is on the left hand side of the keyboard. Ditto super handy when your right hand is on the mouse.
Xix.
The Following keys also need to be altered Lenovo (Score:5, Funny)
Here's a better idea Lenovo: enlarge the: U, O, Y, K, C, U, F keys. ;)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I thought he was talking more about this [img45.exs.cx]
Boffins? (Score:5, Funny)
Lenovo has boffins? What the heck are they, creatures from Lord of the Rings? Some kind of exotic bird? Wait, the dictionary says it's BRITISH SLANG. Well, you can just keep your esoteric BRITISH SLANG over there on your little island, buster, because we don't need no stinking BRITISH SLANG over here in America, or the rest of the world for that matter. If you can't write in standard English so English speakers around the world can understand it, just press your DELETE key (no matter what size it is) and go do something else. *grumble* damned Recoats *grumble*
Re:Boffins? (Score:5, Informative)
America doesn't use the word 'boffins'? That's such a 'regular' word (to me) that I never even realised it was slang. (I'm Australian but have lived in America for quite a while - never occurred to me you guys didn't use that word). Well you learn something every day.
Sure enough though, you are right (according to Wiki). And the fact that most of the hits you get on Google if you search for the term are .au or .uk sites.
Having said that, I think it's pretty obvious what it means given the rest of the sentence. Plus Slashdot often uses US slang (or not even slang, but US words which have other equivalents elsewhere) all the time in headlines, but that doesn't trouble the rest of us (too much). Context is your friend.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
America doesn't use the word 'boffins'?
No. If there's one thing that instantly pegs someone as "not American", it's using the word 'boffin'. Either that, or looking shocked when we talk about "spanking a child's fanny."
Apple must be scared (Score:3, Funny)
This has to be the biggest upgrade to PC usability since PC 97 added colour coding the mouse and keyboard connectors. Well done.
Caps Lock Idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
DELETE FROM my.memory WHERE opinion = his
/
COMMIT
Re:Caps Lock Idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because he doesn't see a reason for Caps Lock out there in his little business world doesn't mean the key isn't highly useful to application developers. I'll point out SQL capitalization standards as just one example.
DELETE FROM my.memory WHERE opinion = his
/
COMMIT
Well, if you have a proper editor you don't need to type those keywords in caps, because the editor does it for you automatically.
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.
Please think of the forum junkies (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:5, Informative)
This is a ridiculous story as HP already messed with keyboards.
Try checking out the HP laptop keyboards on Canadian laptops. Dear god the layout on those things is terrible. The old QWERTY stuff is in the right place but punctuation etc... Is all over the place. Absolutely horrendous keyboards. I wound up having to use a USB keyboard with it as the default keyboard is damn near unusable unless you like doing a LOT of deleting and retyping of stuff.
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.
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:4, Informative)
I've been very happy with my HP laptops and desktops and their quality control.
I wouldn't know about XP drivers, but the hardware runs current versions of Windows and Linux just fine.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dear Lenovo:
Put together a netbook, and make absolutely, positively sure to put the track point on it. I'll buy two.
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Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:5, Funny)
That's because it's optimized for Canadian, not American.
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:5, Informative)
Mods: Actually, he may have a point.
IIRC, Canada gets two different keyboard layouts - US English, and French-Canadian. I'm guessing someone accidentally bought a French-Canadian layout.
Dear Aunt, (Score:3, Funny)
let's set so double the killer delete select all
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you hate typing, you could try using speech recognition software. It's come a long way.
All I need to ruin your argument is one letter.
C.
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
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Replacement KB: $10
Replacement touch screen: $700
Any other questions?
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HERE'S AN IDEA (Score:5, Funny)
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They should just put CapsLock along with PrintScreen , ScrollLock, Pause/Break.
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well .. I for one don't. I own this one [logitech.com] and the double sized delete key WAS a factor.
Laugh as much as you want, but my keyboard is the input device I use the most, and I'm pretty sure this is true for a lot of /.'ers. I find it always mind boggling that people will pay incredible sums for their mices, but will get $9,99 keyboards with the argument that "it's just a keyboard, you know". A keyboard should be as ergonomic as possible, unless all you ever do is click links in your browser.
When friends give me a
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I find it always mind boggling that people will pay incredible sums for their mices, but will get $9,99 keyboards with the argument that "it's just a keyboard, you know".
The term is 'meese'. ;) As for $10 keyboards, my current keyboard was free. I got it off a 'dead keyboard' pile and it's awesome, can't beat the motion of the older keyboards.
Re:Lenovo aren't the only ones (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Re:Article?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Straight from Lenovo: http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?p=1565 [lenovoblogs.com]