Surprise: New MS keyboards return to standard layout

ActiveWin shows some photos of the upcoming MS keyboards. There are some models with fingerprint reading – I guess they automatically feed the password associated with a fingerprint to Internet Explorer.

But more fascinating is the keyboard layout of the fingerprint keyboards and of the new wired keyboard. Guess what? It has the old four-in-a-row function keys and a standard key block above the cursor cross. There are still those stupid “special” function key assignments but I hope they’ll default to off now.

They just fixed one of my big petpeeves last week with the new 5.2 intellipoint drivers. Now you can map the mouse wheel to click as a “middle-click.” You could map it to anything else in the previous versions, but they ommitted middle-click! It would kill games that required you to use middle-click, because all the other options would drop you back to the desktop. I sent off a scathing letter to MS Hardwaren about that one.

Now they just need to kill the f’in F-Lock key.

Where’s my Natural Keyboard version?

Guess I’d better hope my Natural Multimedia keyboard holds up…

They have those “curved” keyboards now, how about those?

Really? Awesome! That annoyed the heck out of me, too, though more because I was used to using middle-click in FIrefox to “open in new tab”. So can you just go download the new intellipoint drivers now and fix this problem?

Why yes, Thrrrpptt! Yes you can

And while you’re there you should download the new IntelliType 5.2 version, too, if you have a MS keyboard.

Thank god… I actually bought one of those “ms office” keyboards, with a scroll wheel and dozens of extra buttons, and couldn’t use it. I use the insert and delete keys too often; I need the standard 2x3 configuration.

Really? Awesome! That annoyed the heck out of me, too, though more because I was used to using middle-click in FIrefox to “open in new tab”. So can you just go download the new intellipoint drivers now and fix this problem?[/quote]

Weird… I don’t even have the Intellipoint drivers installed, and I’ve never had a problem mapping middle-click within applications…