Dell removed Fn+Left/Right for Home/End from all its products
twitter.com
twitter.com
The current XPS on the Dell web site has "home"/"end" printed on the F11/F12 keys. So it seems like a conscious choice of theirs (right or wrong) and not a bug for them to fix.
Is there a BIOS update or something I should avoid that takes the older XPS models and changes their home/end to conflict with what's printed on the keyboard?
it's definitely not a firmware issue if the labels are not printed on the arrow keys.
it's not a usability issue, either. yes, it sucks that the keyboard layout changed, sure. and, you're a human, right? a member of the most adaptable species ever known? yes. yes, you are. you can handle retraining some muscle memory.
early in my career, every single computer I used had a different keyboard layout. every. single. one. at most it was a very mild inconvenience.
Fn + arrow keys has become something of a convention; it works even when not explicitly printed on the keycaps.
Also, I don't think anyone called it a bug, it's rather an 'issue' (except the problem described with the external Dell-keyboard, which indeed sounds like a bug...)
At least my old Alienware has PgUp/Dn keys above left/right, and standalone home/end next to F12 (silly place).
I was hoping to upgrade, but I guess Lenovo and others will have to do. I just want an OLED screen, upgradeable RAM to at least 32G, two M2, a discrete GPU, Thunderbolt 3/4 and... Now a keyboard with Fn-arrows or discrete cursor keys.
They were good up to maybe 4 years ago, but since then their top of the range hardware is bad and their support worse.
Try running acpi_listen and pressing an Fn+something combo to see if it's ACPI-based. If so, it's a relatively easy fix by disassembling the ACPI tables, altering them and then using a bootloader that can replace the tables like I think grub supports (or if running Linux using kernel parameters to replace them).
These are not the changes one would expect to see in a professional-grade laptop. On the other hand, the Lenovo line looks good in this regard.
It does but you have to use Fn with the delete key.
In my five-ish years of using a Macbook Pro though, I could never get used to this in muscle memory.
There is simply none normal laptops left on the market for pro users.
Very cost-centric like virtually all OEM space is.
> Very cost-centric like virtually all OEM space is.
I'm not sure what you mean by this to be honest
I recently saw their two screened laptop, build quality was superb, as was the rest of hardware BOM, and original engineering.
For Lenovo, I see the same disease that claimed Dell before The "PRODUCT MANAGEMENT."
They had an excellent XPS line, and then they started to slice stuff off it every new model. Now it's very bog down commodity hardware underneath:
1. Low spec memory
2. Qcomm low-end WiFI/bt which bugs out even in Windows.
3. Low-end SSD
4. Batteries going down from 68Wh to 52Wh in the 13th
5. Panel went from top tier one, to noname low-end ISP with <300nits brightness. Only 4k panel now is above average for the class.
6. Testing, and engineering down the drain: mutual RF interference kills WiFi, BT, PCIe, TB, USB3.
For Lenovo, it's of course not the ThinkPads of old. For P15 line is experiencing the same "fade," like a decision to fit P15s with 3 cell battery.
The prime majority of laptops of the market don't come with original engineering. It's almost always outsourced to no-name Taiwanese engineering shops, which largely copy-paste designs for internals, and mechanical engineering for every brand around.
SB simply doesn't look to me it went through any of such design shops, and the engineering school feels very American (it's "one and done" assembly, they tried very hard to use less fasteners, and subassemblies.)
At the same time they repeated the same mistakes that Taiwanese had 20-15 years ago.
2. Complete lack of modularity, serviceability, and odd assembly order. This means minor changes will need mobo redesign. And defect found after test, or on return equals scrapping the unit.
3. Custom mechanical parts used liberally
4. Too many programmable ICs
5. Extremely wasteful use of case space to work around rigidity issues.
Do you think it's a necessary tradeoff? Are other laptops with custom designs subject to the same internal engineering mistakes?
I know nothing about that - was speaking purely from an end user UX perspective
not sure what you're basing your opinion on. maybe people near you have more issues, I dunno.
On my Asus laptop this is toggleable by pressing Fn+Esc, so now the Fn-key constantly has a light on to let me know that my top row is F1-F12.
why can't they all standardize?
the worst hallucination that hardware and software manufacturers have is that they "need to add unique value" or just that they "need to add value" at all.
I DO NOT care for any vendor-specific crap on the laptop. I do not buy a laptop for any of those things. I do not want a vendor-specific driver updater when Windows Update already does that. or, would, if the vendor published their drivers there. I do not want vendor-specific wallpaper. I do not want any of the bundled software. ever. No one ever buys a specific laptop to gain access to those things. No one.
businesses often choose a single manufacturer for most deployed hardware to make administration easier, and none of them choose their vendor based on those admin tools. they choose based on price, features, and warranty terms.
"we need to add value".... no, you need to stop ruining things in the name of value.
My work laptop is a 9570 and my personal laptop is the 9500. I have a relatively easy time switching back and forth between the two but I do prefer the home/end setup of the 9570.
I remapped: - PgUp is Home, PgDown is End - Top-right keys on the keyboard are PgUp/PgDn because I use them all the time and can easily place my fingers there without taking eyes off the display. In this case this means that Ins -> PgUp and Del -> PgDn. - PrScr (which for some reason Lenovo decided to place between right Alt and right Ctrl) is now Del. Nearby and easy to reach (blindly). - Old Home/End now serve as Ins/PrScr because these are rarely used.
Now, if only I could find some custom keycaps somewhere. :)
[1] https://manofmany.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ThinkPad-Tr...
For me it's even more complicated cause I use Colemak.
https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-General/Inspiron-7490-B...
Combined with Shift and/or Ctrl you get really fast in modifying text, as you only switch both hands blindly between "navigate/select" position and "write" position.
Examples:
You start modifying a long sentence and realize that you need to rewrite the text after your cursor?
--> Shift+Ctrl+Right let's you quickly select words, Shift+Fn+Right selects the whole line to your right. The next keystroke will replace everything you just highlighted with your new input.
Need to add a line of code above/below the line you just modified?
--> Fn+Right, then Enter, to start a new line below the cursor.
--> Fn+Left, then Enter, to start a new line above the cursor.
Thing is, does Dell owe customers' workflow any consideration?