>> Michael Geary wrote: >>> In the sneak peek video, David Hill says "Delete and Escape are the two most >>> frequently used keys on a keyboard." >> >>> He seems to believe that Delete and Escape are used more than Backspace, >>> Spacebar, Shift, Enter, and the ever-popular letter "E". >> >>> I would *really* like to see how they came to that conclusion. Otherwise it >>> gives the appearance that they've made keyboard changes based on a complete >>> fantasy. >> >> How about, "DEL and ESC are the two most frequently used NON-LETTER, >> NORMAL-SIZED keys on a keyboard"? > >What is a NORMAL-SIZED key? I've never seen a Thinkpad with either DEL or >ESC keys equal in size with the letter/number keys. Just by looking at >the shine on my X60s keyboard it's Ctrl first and closely followed by Alt. > >Tony >
For that matter, on my X32, using the Shine Test (approach the keyboard from a low angle and see how shiny each key is), I find that Home End PgUp and PgDn are all shinier (i.e., more used) than Delete or Insert. Esc is slightly shinier than the latter two, but not as shiny as the former four. I do a lot of typing, and still use some DOS apps, which would increase my instances of Esc. Let's not forget that on old desktop keyboards the Esc key used to be where the tilde / single closing (grave) quote is. If you were using pre-DOS programs such as Magic Wand or composing a document to be printed on a daisy-wheel printer in ED, you'd be hitting the Esc key a lot (showing his age). Sounds like either Lenovo are telling a whopper, or their sample was either skewed or too small, or both. The X32 doesn't have Windows keys, and I don't miss them. The only use I'd have for a number keypad is to input Alt-017 single-character keystrokes. Old habits do die hard. The shine test tells me that I hardly ever used the right Ctrl- and Alt- keys, but often use the left ones. I found the brightness slider on the 600? serieses better than Fn-Home and Fn-End. Well, I can agree that it'll be nice to have a microphone mute button. -- happy Jonathan Berry and Erika http://members.shaw.ca/berry5868/fun.htm _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
