Opinion: why the UK keyboard?

stereoroid

Silly question: it's now over 5½ years since Ireland, along with most European currencies, adopted the Euro as its currency. Punts are no longer legal tender. My question is: why are computers in Ireland still sold with UK keyboards?

Neither the US nor UK keyboards have a dedicated € key: you need to use an odd shortcut like Ctrl-Alt-4 or AltGr-4 on both, to get the €.

The standard UK keyboard has 102 keys, versus the USA's 101 keys. On the 102-key model, the Enter key gave up some of its area. Me, I'd rather have the big Enter key when I'm typing.

There's not much chance of a real "Euro" keyboard: Germany, Sweden et al have extra characters to cater for. In Ireland, however, I see no reason why we can't use US keyboards. It might make it a bit easier to get e.g. cheap notebook imports for the USA market.

Or I might be barking up the wrong tree... thoughts?

PS: if anyone thinks this an anti-Brit idea... I am a Brit. Scottish, to be specific. :cool:

tak

Dunno about the reduction in number of keys but I'd like an increase in the spacing between keys - or a bigger keyboard, in plain language.
My hand aren't too big yet even I find it a p***k to type fast at times.
What would the Pat Jennings' of this world like to do with the Dell keyboard, I wonder . . . .

Would like to find a way to program some of the redundant function keys for foreign characters, accents, etc too.

Khannie

You should be able to reassign a key to a specific value somehow.

I think the idea of cheaper imports is (unfortunately) flawed tbh. You can replace the keys on a laptop for a few euro (we've done this in work with US laptops).

Personally, I'd switch to the US style keyboards for cheaper kit in a heartbeat.

Capt'n Midnight

Italian keyboards have "£" too.

I dislike the way us keyboards are missing one key but Brazillian Porteguese (US layout) is the biz if you want most of the common characters by typing ' ` :~ etc. in front of they key you want accents/fada/circumflex's and stuff on .


Why oh why did they decide to push three keys to get the Euro ( yes I know you can do AltGr 4 )

zilog_jones

From what I've seen, US keyboards don't even show where the Euro symbol is. Also, there's a helluva lot of people around here who've been typing with UK keyboards for a long time - the minor differences with US keyboards will annoy. I'm sure a lot of businessy people and banks here still have to deal with pounds as well.

My first PC (a 386 ) had a US keyboard, and I don't miss the larger return key a bit. I much prefer where the backslash and tilde and stuff are with the UK keyboards.

pickarooney

How would a US keyboard help typing the Euro symbol?
I switch between a French keyboard at work and a UK keyboard at home (big enter key, I hate the little uns) - my fingers and brain have a real ding-dong battle of an evening trying to avoid typing Qs all over the place. And Shift for numbers.... no, I think the UK keyboard rocks, with Alt-Gr+accent+letter no major headache for typing accents.

Capt'n Midnight

and I'm still miffed that the function keys moved from the side to the top

No use having two more function keys if they are too far away to use easily. God be with the days when
F1 was help
F2 was save
F3 was save As
F10 was exit
and all it took was a flick of the wrist or little finger, no having to move your entire arm from the forward from the shoulder

enda1

I much prefer where the @ is on the US keyboard, makes much more sense I think especially cause it allows the ' and " to be the same key.

po0k

Just change your keymapping.

nyom

Capt'n Midnight

anyone got the link to the compaq 255 key keyboard ?
no shift or alt keys need to get all the characters

Soundman

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

anyone got the link to the compaq 255 key keyboard ?
no shift or alt keys need to get all the characters

I'd be interested in seeing that. Can't find it on Google anyway using the obvious search parameters.

Hobbes

ALTGR-4 isn't a strange shortcut at all. I use Korean keyboard and you use ALTGR to switch language layout from English to Hangul. I guess it is strange if you have never used it before.

WillieDH

It's as simple as this, the volume of PC's sold in Ireland doesn't support a manufacturer having an Irish English specific keyboard

stereoroid

WillieDH wrote:

It's as simple as this, the volume of PC's sold in Ireland doesn't support a manufacturer having an Irish English specific keyboard

Well, no - I wasn't suggesting that, and I don't think anyone else was, either. I just bought a new USB keyboard for home, to go with a new USB KVM*, and it's a US keyboard. I gave the Punt a Punt.

* I bought a Belkin Switch2 USB Keyboard/Video/Mouse switch (with Audio switching too), so I can move use the same (large) monitor with a desktop and a laptop.