WT (what the) Bleep is with the LEFT SHIFT key on almost all laptops these days, well at least the ones at Future Shop and Staples, where it is impossible to find a laptop w/ a reasonable LEFT SHIFT like you see here.
I was in Future Shop the other day on one of my downtown errand runs browsing for a 15 inch PC laptop for our co-op. Finding the 1st laptop that met performance and size prerequisites, i launched the little Windows ‘Crappy’, sorry ‘Sticky Notes’ app to test the keyboard. I typed the customary drill: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party” and then i tested the SHIFT keys by uppercasing the 1st letter of each word.
It was then that i noticed the “problem w/ the LEFT SHIFT key.” The thing was now half its preordained size and it was sharing its space w/ a backslash key. Notorious history aside, the backslash ought not to be stealing the LEFT SHIFT key’s turf. The LEFT SHIFT was too far away from where my left pinkie natively resided (on the letter A key) and so my pinkie ended up hitting the key that sat just to the right of the LEFT SHIFT: and thus the reason for the regular appearance of the backslash in my Sticky Notes window. I tried to compensate by exaggerating the shifting of my left hand to reach the LEFT SHIFT key. Sometimes i overshot the keyboard itself, but even when i found the LEFT SHIFT, my left hand required a compass to claw its way back to its standard position, and so a cascade of further errors ensued.
I repeated this on several laptops and filled Sticky Notes windows full of backslash-ridden nonsense. On the way out i stopped and typed into a Macbook (Future Shop actually sells Macs) and for the 1st time did not encounter the LEFT SHIFT brokenness i had recently grown accustomed to. It was wonderful to simply capitalize the letter ‘i’ without the subtle stress of a possible backslash.
Hoping for better fortune, i ran several blocks east to Staples. This time though i was smarter and headed 1st to fetch a ruler a few aisles over from the laptop aisle. I began measuring the horizontal distance between the left border of the letter A key and the right border of the LEFT SHIFT key. In my peripheral there were several others debating processor types, speeds and harddrive sizes. And there i was carefully measuring w/ my Staples ruler. It did not go unnoticed (to me) that my behaviour, coupled w/ my outfit, which was my errand-run winterized version, highly suggested “street person”. It consisted of 7 layers of shirts and sweaters, 3 leg layers, 2 scarves, a hobo’s toque and headband combo, and this clincher: 2 extra shirts: long sleeves roped around my waist; the shirt trunks hanging like a skirt. The purpose of this running “add-on” was to aggressively counter the inevitable wet cold, which innocently began as warm sweat.
Anyhow, the smallest “LEFT-SHIFT GAP” was close to 11mm and some were as big as 12mm. The 11mm ones were better (there were some Toshibas and an Asus that came in close to this) than the 12s, which were impossible, but still clearly inferior by “normal” keyboarding standards.
Several days later it occurred to me that Dell laptops might not have evolved their laptop keyboards into bozoboards. I looked closely at online images of the Dell Inspiron 15R, and i was pleased to see quite a large LEFT SHIFT key (not the now-pervasive tiny one w/ its next-door backslash neighbour.) I promptly submitted an order online for a Dell Inspiron 15R.
However, the very next day, i ran across this frightening image below of an Inspiron 15R. I believe the apparent contradiction can be reconciled by 2 possibilities: 1st that the Inspiron 15R has more than 1 model / model#, and 2nd, that there may be country-specific keyboard differences. Dell has assured me, after introducing me to every one of their 1000 departments, that the particular model headed my way is the one w/ the very nice LEFT SHIFT.
The Dell has just arrived (Nov 30 2011) and it’s got the big LEFT SHIFT.