A few months ago while giving my father his internet training at a local internet cafe, (why not at home?, well if you’d seen what he did to our computer! I figure at least an Internet cafe will have insurance.) I came across an ‘English’ keyboard. I’d never heard of such a thing but apparently they exist. Slightly different to the standard one, which is American I suppose, what made it extra confusing was that the PC it was attached too had the normal drivers installed. So not only did the keyboard have some values in strange places but what was printed on the keys did not always correspond to what they produced.
Well last week at work they gave me my new laptop. Its very nice but again, not only has strange key values in strange places but also exhibits an alarming discrepancy between what is printed on many keys and what they actually produce. So you have to guess twice. Once based on memory and then if that doesn’t work a second time based on some sort of strange ESP. And this is yet another form of discrepancy different to the ‘English’ keyboard which ICT advise me is because it is a ‘Dutch’ keyboard!
So how many keyboards from how many countries are there out there and who uses them?
postcards from the north 