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Does Your PC Really Need a SysRq Button Anymore?
An anonymous reader writes "Ever wondered what the SysRq key on your keyboard does? Lenovo has decided it's so rarely used that it has started removing the key from some new Thinkpad Edge laptops. We already know that Lenovo are something of the fastidious scientists when it comes to keyboard design. Last time they fiddled with the age-old key layout, it was after painstaking research to count exactly how many times users press the Delete and Escape keys. Now it seems another relic of computer keyboards is starting to disappear."
On my laptop, I use it to toggle VMs. It's perfect because on my machine, it does absolutely nothing. Double scroll lock is the next best bet for me, but my keyboard requires me to press the Fn key simultaneously.
Is Lenovo leaving any "useless" keys? Some of us actually NEED keys that are otherwise never used and the OSes recognize by default.
That is the Print Screen key. Don't ever remove that key from the keyboard! I don't care that the word "SysRq" is written below "Print Screen" on that key. Feel free to remove that "SysRq" word from there, but do NOT remove the handy print screen key! Thanks.
I don't know, but having different keys for backspace and delete on mine would be very nice...
If this change is indicative of what'll happen to the "serious business" series (T, X, R), then the ThinkPad has, after some 18 years or so, finally jumped the shark.
One of the main selling points of a ThinkPad was the keyboard. When all the other brands went completely nuts and placed the PrtSc/ScrLk/Pause/Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp and PgDn keys at a whim, on a ThinkPad you could blindly hit the spot where the key was supposed to be and actually hit it. They were quite proud of that, and nobody minded.
Now, you get a chiclet keyboard with the F-keys disabled by default and six rows. Well, congrats Lenovo, you've just went from top-of-the-line in 2010 to consumer-grade-sony-vaio in 1999 or so.
Another thing were the displays. Great, high-resolution, matte 4:3 screens one could work with. I own a 12" X61 with 1050 horizontal lines. Nowadays, it's WXGA with less than 800 lines in everything up to 14.1", and half of the models come in glare-type finish. Thanks to the shiny finish you can't see the screen contents anyways, so that slightly mitigates the lack of resolution.
What's next, Lenovo? Get rid of the high-quality finish of the Notebooks and switch to cheap plastic? Fuck up the support infrastructure IBM built? Oh wait, already happened. I guess it's down to the nipple mouse as the last true hallmark of a ThinkPad. And that, I won't give up 'til you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
One major ilk I have about laptop keyboard is the positioning of the CTRL and Fn keys.
I was in a shop recently that sold laptops of many different brands. All of them, except Lenovo, had the CTRL key as the first key in the row, with the Fn key to the right of it. This, IMHO, is the correct position for it - it's where my little finger automatically goes for CTRL, and where it is located on a 'normal' keyboard.
Lenovo had the Fn key first, with the CTRL key to the right, meaning that when you go to hit CTRL-, I hit Fn instead. This, for me, is a major factor is choosing what laptop to buy - if the CTRL key is in the wrong place, it's marked off the list immediately.
funny story:
Several years ago, for work, I got a Compaq Evo N620c (which I still use for work). While the Fn and CTRL keys are in the wrong place, at least they have the forethought to allow you to swap them in the BIOS, which I naturally did.
Now, the laptop was to be reburned, so the Service Desk took it in. When I went to pick it up the next day, they had a normal keyboard plugged into the PS/2 socket. I asked them why, and they told me that the CTRL key was broken and they couldn't use CTRL-ALT-DEL (yes, it's Windows. *sigh*)
So firstly I explained to them that the CTRL and Fn keys were swapped in the BIOS, and then asked the question "Why didn't you just use the CTRL key on the other side of the keyboard?" (which, when tried, worked perfectly).
*sigh*
T.
I always liked Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken, since that's kinda what REISUB does. But hey, any mnemonic that helps you remember is a good mnemonic, right?
For the love of $deity, but the CTRL key back where it frakkin' belongs, next to the frakkin' A key!
Seriously. CTRL-key combo's are much easier to press, while touch typing, when the CTRL key is just to the left of the A key.
Cheers,
RM
Nobody's as dumb, as I appear to be