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Comment by art0rz | Hacker News Reader

I own one of these. Upgraded from my Surface Book 2. No complaints so far, except that the Fn key is where the Ctrl key should be and I keep pressing the Fn key :)

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You can change it in the UEFI so that Fn acts as Ctrl and vice versa.

> You can change it in the UEFI so that Fn acts as Ctrl and vice versa.

First thing I do on every thinkpad. It would be very interesting to know what percentage of customers actually wants that Fn key in that location instead of Ctrl.

My T470 has the Fn on the edge, and Ctrl on the inside. I like it because it requires moving my pinky less to hit Ctrl.

My problem isn't Fn and Ctrl, but that Shift may or may not be the same shape.

If Ctrl is on the outside I am guaranteed to hit Shift when I push them both with my pinky straight up.

I have two Lenovo laptops in front of me right now.

The key straight up from Fn on the Ideapad 3 is a pipe. On the Thinkpad the shift key is the correct length (two keys wide).

The two have opposite Fn and Ctrl keys.

Consistency, am I right?

Muscle memory is a thing, and even the same manufacturer isn't doing things the same way between models.

I don't know the percentage, but some do prefer it, and I'm among them.

I'm surprised so many people express any preference, though. My take is that the Fn key is an abomination and it's not present on desktop keyboards so either choice of location is wrong. If I could, I'd remove both Fn and the 'Windows' key. Neither my Chromebook nor the T40-series Thinkpads I first used have these keys, and they are noticeably more comfortable due to the larger Control and Alt keys it permits.

I'm also surprised people complain about this but not about the layout of Apple laptop keyboards, where 'fn' is also in the corner.

It's a shame they aren't the same size so I can pop them off and switch them around

You can get around this by mapping Caps Lock to Ctrl, which is easier to press anyway. It's probably a good idea even if you don't use a certain modifier-key-heavy text editor.

The Sigma move is to assign Ctrl onto the Alt key (which is right next to the spacebard), and then Alt to the Capslock Key. Then you can activate Ctrl (alt key) with your thumb (far more frequently) instead of your pinky.

The position next to the spacebar seems more awkward than to the left of "a", especially if you use Emacs or otherwise a lot of Ctrl presses. I currently have the CAPS key mapped so that it's Esc on tap, and Ctrl on hold. Works great.

It's only awkward next to the spacebar if you use the wrong finger. What key are you currently hitting with your left thumb? That is a whole finger you could be using to hit LALT key, instead of letting it just sit there wasted., and it's very natural. You can use Emacs easily with this configuration for both modifiers.

On a thinkpad keyboard, my thumbs fall naturally on the space bar (well, rather between the space bar and the left trackpoint button), so hitting the alt next to it implies an uncomfortable bending motion of my left thumb. Also, the x is just over that key, so doing M-x in Emacs would be a weird pinch-like move. Maybe it's a matter of habit, but using CAPS as Ctrl/Esc is literally a 2mm move of the pinky to the left from my home position.

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