[gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

Sat Jan 2 05:15:50 UTC 2010

Wayne,

Pouch? What pouch? A leather bag of some sort? You must mean, in some way, 
the two long buttons that seem to be the touch pad. This is no little 
netbook; the area beneath the keyboard is very broad and large, and those 
keys are easy to avoid and don't have a hair trigger sensitivity, even if I 
should accidentally brush against them, which is unlikely.

If I did somehow deactivate those buttons, I'd get a USB mouse for those 
rare instances where a sighted friend might want to use the computer. I have 
no desire to teach Windows keyboard commands to anyone who's not normally 
interested in them, so that would be my solution in such a situation. But it 
seems as if it's all moot, because as I said, the touch pad seems pretty 
easy to avoid and hard to activate by accident. Honest. I've experimented 
freely with this by leaving the computer turned off but opening it up and 
running my hands over the area, finding and pressing the touch pad keys, and 
so forth. I think I'm okay on this issue. Thanks.
From: "Wayne Merritt" <wcmerritt at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, January 01, 2010 7:12 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

That touchpad really messed with my head the first couple of days I
had my netbook. I finally found a way to deactivate it from the system
tray and in the control panel. My thumbs seemed to be drawn to that
area of the netbook on their own, so I finally deactivated it. I
suppose that this might frustrate any sighted person that tries to use
my netbook at some point, but then again, they're not the ones that
use it on a regular basis. Besides, what better way is there to
provide a crash course on keyboard commands and their usefulness,
grin.

Good luck,
Wayne

On 1/1/10, Joel Deutsch <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com> wrote:
> Hi Lloyd,
>
> I'm aware that there's an area faintly outlined by grooves in the central
> area of that big flat hand rest slab beneath the keyboard area. I knew to
> look out for it just from things people said on lists, and the sighted
> friend who configured this particular Acer for me pointed out exactly 
> where
> it was, disabled it partly in the bios (he's an I T professional, so he
> knows what  he's doing) but warned me to simply keep my hands clear of the
> area, no matter what. So far I've put in hours sitting with this machine 
> on
> my knees and learning slowly to use it, and I've so far been entirely
> successful in avoiding that patch that is the touch pad. I'm not 
> misspelling
> words like that last one, just breaking them up so that Jaws doesn't
> mispronounce them, which drives me nuts.
>
> Thanks for the warning, though. And Happy New Year!
>
> Joel
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lloyd Rasmussen" <lras at sprynet.com>
> To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2009 3:56 AM
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard
>
>
> The central part of that "hand rest" is probably a touchpad, which acts 
> like
> a mouse.  If you haven't already done so, you need to deactivate it and
> learn how to deactivate it in the future in case it decides to come back 
> to
> life.  Clicking or touching in the wrong places can really mess you up.
>
> Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, Maryland
> Home:  http://lras.home.sprynet.com
> Work:  http://www.loc.gov/nls
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>> Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
>> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2009 1:08 AM
>> To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard
>>
>> Ted,
>>
>> Thanks a lot for the moral support. I've been putting in about an hour of
>> just practicing nearly every day, and I can see that I've begun to
>> memorize
>> and visualize (a formerly sighted person's habitual way of mapping things
>> the little keyboard, and I guess I'm making some progress. I'm still a
>> long
>> way from my fantasy of sitting back in an easy chair with the laptop on 
>> my
>> knees and just typing away; even when I get more of the keyboard
>> memorized,
>> I know I'll probably always be struck by the feeling that it isn't a
>> normal
>> typist's keyboard. Wrong hand position, and that slab of "hand rest," I
>> guess it's thought of, just screws things up if you're a serious typist.
>> If
>> children were all given their first piano lessons on something akin to
>> this,
>> not many of them would grow up to be serious pianists, I'm afraid.
>>
>> But I'll keep working at it and see if I can develop a level of skill and
>> comfort that's "good enough," to steal a phrase from psychology. The
>> good-enough mother, it was.
>>
>> Thanks again for the moral support. I was starting to think I was really
>> lame. Now I see it's truly difficult, but can be done if you're
>> determined.
>>
>> Joel
>
>
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-- 
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http://wayneism.blogspot.com
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www.whitecaneday.org

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