Poll : What is the most useless key on the keyboard

[Vishesh]

Scroll Lock....hell w8......my keyboard doesn't even have it it......

Oh no w8 I found it....I wonder wat it's use is 

[tomos]

The other two that are right up there are right-ctrl and right-alt, in that order.

-kfitting (February 10, 2007, 08:51 AM)

again,
because as a lefthander I'm often using the mouse with left hand (drawing),
I use right Ctrl shortcuts a lot -
I just counted I have well over 20 shortcuts I use regularly using right Ctrl.

I'm sure loads of people use right Ctrl+P for print as well ..

[Edvard]

I am constantly using 'Insert' because the default behavior for the windows command-line is 'overwrite' mode 

I have only ever had to use the 'Scroll lock' key one time...

I used to have an IBM 200MHz motherboard that had a bug (tell me if you've heard this one before...)
The CPU would not run full speed unless the keyboard buffer was full.  Scroll Lock did the trick.

Anyways, that happened exactly one time in my entire time using PC keyboards. (I notice this poll is biased towards them, I wonder what the 'useless' keys are on Mac keyboards, or other keyboards in general?)

[bluesear]

I have voted "other"
Maybe "Alt" or "Pause"

[Wordzilla]

I have voted "other"
Maybe "Alt" or "Pause"

-bluesear (February 14, 2007, 03:08 AM)

You may want to check out Find and Run Robot, which is pretty successful in utilizing Pause the Useless. 

[Curt]

For me, the most useless (and also the most anoying) key in my keyboard is definitelly the 'insert' key. I always wondered why people invented that thing. I even removed it from my external keyboard, because i kept inadvertely pressing it, and overwriting stuff!

-jgpaiva (February 10, 2007, 07:31 AM)

Insert ToggleKey by Mike Lin:

Insert ToggleKey itk_setup.exe (77kb self-extracting setup) 

Ever accidentally turn on overtype, and as a result typed over half a sentence?
ITK sounds a tone whenever you press Insert.
 

http://www.mlin.net/other.shtml

[Ruffnekk]

I am constantly using 'Insert' because the default behavior for the windows command-line is 'overwrite' mode 

-Edvard (February 13, 2007, 10:56 AM)

You can change the default setting! Click the icon of a command-line window, choose properties and the tab Options where you can check 'Insert mode' or someting similar (I use Dutch Windows). See screenshot.

[Poolee]

I've voted for the Numlock key.  In all honesty, I've never used the Home, End, PgUp etc on the keypad.  The most frustrating thing I've found is the VMware turns off the NumLock key...

Anyone got an app that ensures this baby is always on and can't be turned off?

[Edvard]

Quote from: Edvard on February 13, 2007, 10:56:52 AM

I am constantly using 'Insert' because the default behavior for the windows command-line is 'overwrite' mode  Angry Angry Angry

You can change the default setting!

Thank you Ruffnekk, Thank you very much.

The most frustrating thing I've found is the VMware turns off the NumLock key...
Anyone got an app that ensures this baby is always on and can't be turned off?

Poolee: As far as I know, the numlock key is set by the bios, but that's not the whole story...
1-Does VMWare have a virtual bios that you can tweak? The setting is called "BootUp NumLock Status" and can be set on or off.
See here:
http://www.pcguide.c...et/advNumlock-c.html

2-Are you booting Linux in your VMWare? It's not might not be what you think. See here:
http://www.gossamer-.../linux/kernel/733286

According to the lore(1) the reason that the kernel unconditionally
turns off the num lock was so that Linus' laptop came up ready to type.

I've wondered about that for quite a long time... So weird you have to either patch your kernel or use an external program (setleds, numlockx...) to do something that's drop-dead obvious.

7.20. How To Get NUM LOCK to Default to On.

Use the setleds program, for example (in /etc/rc.local or one of the
/etc/rc.d/* files):

for t in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
do
 setleds +num < /dev/tty$t > /dev/null
done

setleds is part of the kbd package ("How do I remap my keyboard to UK,
French, etc.? "). Alternatively, patch your kernel. You need to
arrange for KBD_DEFLEDS to be defined to (1 << VC_NUMLOCK) when
compiling drivers/char/keyboard.c.