back to article Dell promises replacement keyboards for wonky laptops

Dell has apologised to customers after shipping a batch of its Vostro laptops with the wrong keyboard layout. The firm said it will replace keyboards on its 1310 and 1510 models that went out to customers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The embarrassing cock-up forced the Z key, which should sit beneath the A and S …

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  2. Thomas Pedoussaut
    Thumb Down

    That's still not the right layout

    They basically rotated the culprit row, moving the \ and | key to the far right.

    It's basically just a paint job and a remaping, where they need a real change (smaller Left Shift key, bigger Right Shift key)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not UK Standard

    While it fixes the immediate problem the keyboard is now not a UK standard layout (which requires the [\|] key to be next to the left hand side [shift] key, now it's to the left of the right hand side [shift] key). Previously touch typists were in trouble with any key on the bottom letter row, now they're still in trouble when they need the [\|] key. Better, but hardly standard (Dell's claims that "other manufacturers are using this layout now" is no excuse, it's not standard compliant and will cause problems.)

    Of course why the UK standard layout has that stupid 1980s-esque double row [return] key in the first place (thus forcing the [\|] onto the bottom row and leading to all these issues) is another mystery entirely...

  4. Darryl

    Sounds familiar

    When I first read about this, I thought "Sounds like they used a North American keyboard and just switched a few keys around" We have the larger left shift here. Now they just finished the job and gave you a full NA standard keyboard with the / beside the right shift.

    On the bright side, I won't have any problems typing on your keyboards now

  5. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    \THE \NEW \LOOK \FOR \CAPITAL \LETTERS

    \many year ago, the left S\hiFT was next to Z. \it took me ages to get capital letters right when \ moved in between S\hiFT and Z. Fortunately, this change happened after it was common for terminals to be able to output lower case. (\old terminals marked real capitals with a \ in front.)

    \the new layout, with \ where I expect the right \sHI\ft, just changes the capital letters that come out wrong.

    It could be worse. Chinese keyboards lack |, which makes it awkward to use filters from the command line.

  6. Joe
    Joke

    @ Dan Perren

    That's right, blame Apple why don't you! :P

  7. Richard Silver badge

    Double-height Enter is great

    Which two non-alphanumeric keys are hit most often while typing?

    Space and Enter, closely followed by Shift.

    So keyboards should have a big Spacebar, big Enter key and big Shift key.

  8. Ishkandar

    I would love to see the legal challanges...

    ...when they refuse to honour the warranty because THEY instructed the customer to replace their keyboard. Similarly, if they charge for the call out of their customer support to replace the keyboards that are *NOT* "fit for purpose" in the first case !! I can just visualise the teams of Dell minions scurrying all over EU fixing the keyboards and seriously hitting their bottom-line (in Septic-speak) or net profit before tax in proper English !!

    I think selling 6-months Dell futures now might be a good idea !!

  9. Aodhhan
    Paris Hilton

    Back in the day..

    I remember back when I had to type uphill, both ways, in the snow. When you had to apply 90 lbs of pressure to each stroke in order to smack the paper hard enough, and if you made an error, you had to stop, move the paper up and erase... hoping you wouldn't tear the paper.

    Amazing what people complain about. It isn't like they moved all the vowels to new locations.

    You have a brain... make the adjustment and move on!

    Even Paris gets over one hand bag having a pocket in a different location from another hand bag.

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