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Comment by junaru | Hacker News Reader

> power button between backspace and delete

How layouts like this reach the light of day totally escapes me.

I managed to hit power and enter in quick succession on the Mk III accidentally just a day or two ago so... yeah... I'd be in strong support of putting it somewhere less under my fingertips. Confused the heck out of me, I thought the battery had run out.

Can key assignment software deal with this?

I didnt have a PrtSC key on my Spectre HP machine, and so I remapped NumLock to PrtSc in order to use my screenshot program. Wonder if power can be reassigned.

It's only happened to me once, so I haven't bothered to change it but at least on Linux Mint it's just Settings -> Power Management -> When the power button is pressed -> Do nothing. Problem solved! Bit of a waste of a good button, though and it doesn't look trivial to rebind (IE: not supported by the builtin Shortcuts GUI even though pressing the power button obviously elicits a flicker of the input box).

Yes, at least on another laptop I used that had the power button in a similar place. The button was basically a button like no other for the OS and I was able to just unbind it. It didn't keep me from being able to use the button to power on or to hold the button for a long time to power off.

Yeah Macs deal with this by requiring a slightly longer press than you normally would with normal typing. Also for the caps and eject buttons. Smart idea that works well. I wish other manufacturers would follow their lead (like they do on the design front!)

For me it's a huge red flag. Either the company doesn't test their devices on real users, or doesn't care.

Putting the power button on the keyboard is a cost cutting measure. A lot of Chromebooks do it too. When you are building to a price you get things like this. I'm not surprised really.

I've never really considered these types of devices all that viable on merits. What about this is more compelling than a recertified ThinkPad? Because that's what $500 competes with.

I like how Chromebooks deal with the button. AFAIR when you press it screen contents fade into black and when the animation finishes (after something like 3 seconds) it will show you shutdown/reboot dialog. I never had any problem with the button. On Linuxen it is not as clear cut though.

That doesn't look nearly as frustrating as the right shift key. I'm not sure how I wouldn't miss that every time I tried to hit it.

To be fair, it is not exactly between.

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