[gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

Sun Jan 3 06:08:09 UTC 2010

Wayne,

I'm not insulted by your proposal, don't worry. yes, I did try out several 
laptops at the stores, but I confess that another priority narrowed my 
range: Power and price. I wanted a model with the smallest hard drive and 
not necessarily the most powerful processor, because that's all I need. So 
even though I tried out a few different keyboards before settling on my 
Acer, which was on sale for a particularly good price, I didn't even bother 
looking at the powerhouse models that are promoted as something like media 
centers, with humongous hard drives and powerful processors for handling 
gaming and video editing and the like. I had what you might call netbook 
needs but no desire for the tiny size of a netbook, whose keyboards are all 
too small for me even to have considered.

The friend who helped me buy  buy the machine and worked hard to configure 
it with XP instead of the Windows 7 it was pre-loaded with is now on 
vacation with his wife. There have been other delays. So when he gets back, 
it may be too late to reconfigure the machine back to its original Windows 7 
state and then try to exchange it or get a refund. If that's so, and even 
regardless, I may just get a USB keyboard and learn to appreciate the 
unwieldy setup when my back goes bad or my headaches make it hard to sit at 
my desk at my regular computer.

I don't know what I'll do. I'm just concentrating on not letting this bum me 
out to the point of serious depression. Seriously. Anyway, thanks for the 
input, and don't worry about offending me. It's just a crappy situation. And 
if I'd had to spend a couple hundred more to get a keyboard my fingers could 
make sense of, well, I don't know. I'm not sure I would have done it, given 
how modest my computing needs were in other respects. It just isn't 
sensible. Like buying a BMW to drive to church and the laundromat when a 
Honda Civic would have been just fine.

mumble mumble, as before...

Joel
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Wayne Merritt" <wcmerritt at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 8:10 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

Joel: out of curiosity and menaing no offense by this, did you try out
the laptop keyboard in the store before you bought it? Are you still
within the return period? Though it would be aweful to return it based
solely on the keyboard, if you're having trouble typing, it's
something to consider. Even if you're not in the return period,
perhaps you can work out an exchange for a different style of laptop.

Wayne

On 1/2/10, Joel Deutsch <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com> wrote:
> Dave,
>
> Maybe you're simply right, no matter what discussion has been going on in
> this thread. Believe me, I've been a good touch typist since high school,
> through several generations of typewriters and then more than 25  years of
> computers, the last decade or so using Jaws,and now I just can't deal with
> this laptop. The flatness, the lack of spacing, the way if my fingers fall
> onto something wrong I screw up everything or get bounced onto the Desktop
> mysteriously, etc., this is all mind-blowing. I've spent hours trying to
> deal with this, despite crushing headaches from a medical problem. I just
> don't think I can try anymore.
>
> Thanks for the input. The way some people are talking, I thought if I just
> concentrate hard enough and try longer, I'll figure out where to put my
> hands and fingers. After all, they all say they did. But I feel like I'm
> batting my head against a wall, and I can't take it anymore.
>
> Mumble mumble
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
> To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, January 02, 2010 5:48 PM
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard
>
>
> Joel:
>
> This isn't necessarily a blindness thing.  Touch typing is just that,
> touch typing.  We become very accustomed to a keyboard, it is
> primarily a spacing thing, your fingers are used to the old
> keyboard.  You can either stick it out or get a USB keyboard that
> suits you better.
>
> Personally I hate the small laptop keyboards, but keyboard preference
> is a very personal thing.
>
> Dave
>
> At 02:14 PM 12/29/2009, you wrote:
>>Hi listers,
>>
>>Okay, please come clean. I know some of us are totally blind and some are
>>partial. I'm partial, myself, but I have no central vision thus can't read
>>at all with my eyes. Only with Jaws, recorded literature, and so forth. So
>>in dealing with this new machine of mine, which I'd hoped would be a handy
>>tool, I'm at a loss.
>>
>>I thought I'd be able to get the hang of the keyboard with some effort.
>>it's
>>an Acer with a number key pad so I don't have to learn the Jaws laptop key
>>commands.
>>
>>but still there's no space between the keys and the sections of keys as 
>>I'm
>>accustomed to on a normal keyboard, and no matter how patiently I sit and
>>turn on Jaws Keyboard Help to explore and get the lay of the land, so to
>>speak, I just am finding it nearly impossible to operate the machine.
>>
>>Please bear in mind that I'm a pretty damn good touch typist, plus a Jaws
>>user from way back with the current release. Ordinary stuff like that is
>>not
>>impeding me. But try as I might, my fingers just can't figure out where
>>keys
>>are, except in small, lucky instances and a few keys I happen to have
>>taught
>>myself by now. I don't think this is gonna work.
>>
>>I know I can get a USB keyboard to plug into this laptop, then set the
>>computer within earshot and sit back with only the keyboard on my lap. But
>>this ain't what I'd daydreamed about. I guess I didn't anticipate
>>realistically how tough this would be to do blind.
>>
>>Please just tell the truth, guys. I think a number of you are using
>>laptops,
>>at least as your secondary computers. How many of you actually use your
>>laptops (mine's an Acer PC, for what that matters) normally, and how many
>>use an auxiliary keyboard? Am I in a very low-skill class, sort of, if I
>>can't figure out how to type on something like this the way sighted people
>>do with their own laptops?
>>
>>Ug. Bummed out. thanks for any helpful feedback.
>>and Happy New Year.
>>
>>Joel
>
>
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-- 
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http://wayneism.blogspot.com
My websites:
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www.whitecaneday.org

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