Be Excellent To Each Other

My old Microsfot keyboard's keys are sticking and it's driving me mad. So mad, in fact, that I haven't bothered writing a couple of blog posts I wanted to write because pretty much every other word is missing a letter. (ARGH, I had to type most of that twice.)

I'm going to order the Apple wired keyboard without the numerical keypad bit because everyone goes on about it being aces. Will I need any drivers to get certain keys to function the way I would expect them to in Windows? Are there any specific problems people have encountered using one of these in Windows? Cheers!

Clean it.

As an aside, I tried the Apple keyboard (the newish, super-skinny one) for a while at work, but I couldn't get on with the feel of it.
I like my keys to go 'clunk' when I press them.

The one without the numerical keypad doesn't seem to have an equivalent of the Delete button, which makes it impossible to do the three-fingered salute.

Probably OK in your situation, but I had to logon to our domain at work using one the other day. Had to give up in the end and find another keyboard.

It's a nice enough keyboard, but out the 3 I have on my desk (Boggo Microsoft one, standard HP from a few years back and the tidgy apple one), it definitely my 3rd favourite.

I know some of the Sony Laptops have the same style of keys as the Apple ones, so it might be worth looking if they do a windows version with the same 'action'

/Alan Partridge

I love the Apple keyboard and use it with my Windows PC at home.

There's two ways around this.

1) Google and download Auto-Hotkey and use that to re-assign troublesome buttons.

2) Grab a torrent of the Apple Boot Camp driver disc and install that. It will make you panic a little as it becomes clear that it's installing a complete set of Apple Mac drivers to your PC, but the only one that will make any change at all to your system will be the keyboard one and the Apple OSD for the media functions of that keyboard.

I've gone down the route of Option 2 above and I find it to be perfect.

I vaguely remember doing that a while ago and having pretty much perfect use of the keyboard, but haven't bothered since. It's only the F-keys at the top that don't work if you don't install the drivers, and I haven't needed them enough to justify the bother. Although having no print screen button is sometimes awkward.

Lovely keyboard.



See, I can't stand that at all. When I type, I want it to be almost silent, to the point where the slightly increased noise of my new replacement keyboard—I spilled water on the last one—is annoying me right now.

Hang on, there's no Del. key on the little keyboard? How do I ctrl alt del? I've already ordered it now by the way, and it has dispatched.

Correct. I have one for the Macbook as its small enough to carry with you. Luckily Parallels has a shortcut for the three fingered salute when Windows requires it.

Parallels you say? I shall investigate! The reason I didn't get the larger board with the numerical keypad is because I read a couple of reviews claiming it was much wider than a conventional keyboard, and makes "mousing" difficult. I have a reasonably narrow desk, so opted for the smaller one. Never use the keypad anyway.

edit: Suppose I can keep this old keyboard in case I need to flash my BIOS or anything.

edit edit: I am confused by what exactly I'm supposed to do with Parallels on my Windows machine. Also, it's like 50-odd quid. I realise I could obtain it by various means, but do I really need a £50 bit of software to map some keys?

You have misunderstood. My post points out that the missing key is also a pain on the Mac when running Windows, but Parallels gets around this. I run Windows under Parallels on a Mac.

I've found a Bootcamp MacPro Drivers torrent and I've downloaded the x64 version of "AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe" or something. Do you reckon that'll be the job?

Zio had your answer: http://www.autohotkey.com/

Just use that to map Ctrl, Alt + Del to some sort of key combination of your choice.

Now I understand!

Now I understand!

I think I'd prefer the drivers route, because that option would mean having Auto Hotkey running in the background all of the time, probably in the system tray, and I hate that.

If the drivers let you get around your Delete key issue, absolutely, do that. If they don't, get your Hotkey Cokey on.

Yeah, I have the keyboard with the numpad, so it's not an issue for me. Not sure if the drivers will help. They do help me with the lack of a Print-Screen button though, as F14 does that on my keyboard.

If the drivers don't help, use Auto-Hotkey anyway. It's very basic, but it does the job well enough.

It might be worth pointing out that Apple keyboards have a subtly different UK layout to the one you're used to (e.g. @ is on shift-2, double quote is two to the right of return). This might drive you mad.

That might be controlled by your keyboard region settings or something, though, as they're the right way around on mine (though printed the wrong way on the keyboard itself.)

Oh yeah, when you plug it in it'll be a normal UK one, but then the keycaps won't match. That might drive you mad a different way though. I now remap all my keyboards to the Mac layout.

Again, though, using the Apple BootCamp driver will make your keys do what they say they do, so @ will be shift-2.

I'd rather have my keycaps unmatched than have to retrain years of muscle memory, though each to their own.

As I use a Macbook as my main personal keyboard, I was halfway to retraining anyway. Once I bought Mac keyboards for my home and work PCs I figured I might as well change over fully.

Absolutely, but I'm 100% PC-based, so it makes no sense right now to even remotely bother. If I ever switch to Macs, I'll consider making the awkward leap.

I'm actually okay with this, because IT MAKES SENSE. Why do we separate ' and "?

edit: and as for muscle memory training, IIRC the Half-Life console was set up as an American keyboard, and a lot of Rcon commands required use of ", so I'm semi-used to it. At least, I was 10 years ago.

That would be...challenging.

Your face is right.

His face is challenging. (In a "how long can you keep your dinner down" way.)

It's here! I like it! It's gonna take some getting used to, though. Argh!

Sharp?

Apple do make good keyboards.

They make fucking appalling mice though.

Oh yeah, they need to let the quirky stuff go and just make something functional.

I liked those square, one button horrors they used to do.

It's the one thing I'd change if I got an iMac, but then the non-shit replacement mouse would look all out of place and stuff

The Magic Mouse is alright, actually.

The new magic mouse is supposed to be nice though isn't it? Bloody pricey mind.

I just buy Microsoft/logitech mice for my Macs.

Yeah yeah. You bellend. (I need to get into an internet argument to test the keyboard out at full speed.)

I'm still using my Logitech MX510. It's the best mouse ever! I wish Apple would just make something similar, but white. Or aluminium or whatever.

I must admit that I like the look and idea of the Magic Mouse, but I imagine it might me a tad uncomfortable to use in practice. Plus I already had my fingers burned with that Mighty Mouse debacle.

Whenever I've owned a Mac in the past, I'd replace the mouse straight away. It does kind of spoil the aesthetics I suppose, but sometimes even a Mac owner must sacrifice looks over functionality.

Is the Magic Mouse the one that sort of works like a trackpad on the top side, and a normal mouse movement-wise? I used one in the Apple store and it was reasonably cool, but useless for gaming or something of that ilk - now that Steam is available on Mac I'm surprised our chums at Apple haven't developed some more gaming-centric peripherals to rape us with.

Aye, that's the one.

Also, I don't think the gaming market is something Apple are especially interested in. Once upon a time they were considered to be openly hostile towards game developers on the platform, and whilst that's clearly changed, they're definitely far more focussed on the creative aspects of the Mac than anything else.

Besides which, why would you want Apple-branded gaming equipment especially? There's plenty of decent PC gaming peripherals out there that work just as well on the Mac as the PC and ironically I tend to view my Mac keyboard as the weak link in my PC gaming setup. It's a great keyboard for typing on, but it doesn't always handle multiple simultaneous key presses and the like too well.

I just think there's a peripheral market there for Mac gamers who want their kit to match and what-have-you!

Magic mouse is lovely in terms of functionality, but pretty crappy to hold in your hand. I'm still using mine even with that problem.