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Comment by ypcx | Hacker News Reader

Weird keyboard layouts. Shifting the keyboard off-center to include numeric keypad which no one uses anymore. (Gamers? Please stop.) This alone makes one question what exactly they are "smoking". There wasn't a single big Windows laptop on the market that wouldn't fall into this hole of a flaw.

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No one uses numeric keyboard? WTF? How’d you enter numbers then, using the number row?

A huge issue with non-standard keyboards are international layouts. German layout is already requiring 2 or 3 keys combined to reach {[]}, but on some laptops you need either 3 or 4 keys combined, or often can’t reach it at all. Equally on most mobile bluetooth keyboards.

It’s as if no one thought about languages using more than US keys.

> How’d you enter numbers then, using the number row?

How could anyone possibly enter numbers using the number keys in the number row?

It's almost as if the typical purchaser of laptops isn't entering numbers into spreadsheets endlessly.

Dell D630: Want to enter numbers? Hold FN, use uiopjkl;m,./ as a numpad. No mode switching.

No one replicated this. Sigh.

What? I have a HP 735 which has a similar thing. I believe many others do as well.

However, if you really are into all that much entering numbers to spreadsheet, you'll probably want one of those USB or Bluetooth number keypads.

I use the number row. Is that weird? I think it's much faster than using the numpad anyway since you have 8 fingers you can use instead of just 3 (or 4?) for the numpad. It also means you can much more easily switch between letters and numbers.

Many people including me use the num. pad every day. I will not buy a laptop without it.

> Gamers? Please stop.

I've never used the numpad in a game in my life (except maybe some flight sim from 1998).

I had to use one of those dinky Apple keyboards without it for a while, and I dearly missed it using Blender, Excel and even just Calc. I installed a numeric keypad app on my phone to work around it.

I think the num pad is a huge addition. I use it both in Excel and Photoshop. that being said i love this device more than anything ive seen since the XPS 13

I think the number pad on a laptop is a massive waste and an anti-feature for 99% of users. Most people don't use it enough to justify the space it takes, and especially the ergonomic awkwardness of having the keyboard perpetually off-center.

Here are some other keys that are a massive waste for 99% of users:

* Home

* End

* Backtick/tilde ` ~

* Backslash/pipe \ |

* PrtScn

* Break/Pause

* Any F key that is not F1 or F5

When's the last time most users typed a backslash? A pipe char? A backtick?! (If you say "in a command prompt" you are not talking about the mythical 99% of users)

Depending on the audience, [delete] is a waste of space too - a lot of people just use backspace. Would you abandon it?

Not being useful for everybody doesn't mean it's useful for nobody.

Sure. A number-pad that nearly no-one uses takes up a lot more space than keys that would leave empty space or necessitate a brand-new keyboard layout if they were removed. Very different.

Removing the function keys wouldn't necessitate a brand-new layout, and I suspect the num keys get used more than function keys.

This is 100% a decision in line with much of the core premium Windows audience - corporate employees who use Excel and other programs with numerical data entry on a daily basis.

There has been massive encroachment of MBP and MBAs into the corporate world as BYOD policies have been adopted.

Very smart move.

Yuck. If you are doing this much data entry, you are probably not at a Starbucks and most likely, at a bigCo desk. In that case, a $5 numeric keyboard will be better.

The offcenter keyboard (and worse yet, off-center trackpad) is a much worse compromise.

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