Comments on: April 2009 Issue

By: spencer

spencer — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:32:48 +0000

to clean your keyboard you could use cotton buds and surgical spirit (only a tiny bit of fluid – use sparingly), this is good for getting the grime and dirt out that air will not shift. i find a great pleasure in getting the keys clean although it can be a long task and defo a bit geekish.

By: micr ink ian

micr ink ian — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:10:06 +0000

hey, do you have any tips for giving your keyboard a good cleaning? The compressed air only goes so far. Took is apart once but that was a bit of a disaster.

I’d say about 30% of this dinovo is my dna.

By: RedMoul

RedMoul — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:17:05 +0000

I so understand, in last paragraph just whole salt and is stated

By: words1

words1 — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:35:44 +0000

True — but I use two hands and use the left Alt key. I agree that keyboard shortcuts are the great secret of all operating systems. I use the mouse only when absolutely necessary and thus have none of the aches and pains of my mouse-centric friends.

By: Posol'stvo the Medved

Posol'stvo the Medved — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:31:34 +0000

“the right Alt key, which no human being has ever used”

You are right and you are wrong. The right Alt key is generally useless, but when navigating websites, I regularly use the keyboard combinations [Alt]+[](those are meant to be the arrow keys) as they are shortcuts for “back” and “forward”. Since the right Alt key is nearer the arrows, I can use the right Alt key and the arrows with a single hand. And I am a sucker for keyboard shortcuts – especially those that can be executed with a single hand.

That said, my loved ones insist that I am not entirely human.

By: words1

words1 — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:32:07 +0000

I don’t know the answer. I think almost anything on an M can be fixed. You should probably ask your question at geekhack.org — there are folks there who have experience repairing keyboards. It’s possible that the keys are just not properly seated. If it’s something more complicated (e.g., the logic board gone bad) I think you could also get Unicomp (linked in my article) to fix it, but if you’re in the UK it would, given the postage, probably be cheaper to buy a new Model M.

By: bar

bar — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:18:27 +0000

I have a model M 1999 UK built #42H1292…but the alt keys on it don’t work…they press down fine, and seem to work, but they don’t perform the intended function onscreen…they’re essentially disabled or dead…can this be easily fixed…any suggestions as to how?

many thanks,
bar

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:29:36 +0000

“[...] the right Alt key, which no human being has ever used.”

Actually, the right Alt key is important on many non-US keyboards, where it is used to generate characters which are common in other languages but not found in the standard US keyboard layout. See for example the Wikipedia article on this “AltGr” key at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key and also the article on keyboard layouts. IBM has a page with images of all the keyboard layouts it has offered at http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/keyboards/registry_index.jsp (I have had to deal with various international keyboards in a recent work assignment, so these pages in particular have been helpful to me.)