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Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

I passed over buying an X1 Carbon for a few reasons, but I always check the keyboard of a potential purchase for the pgup/pgdown/home/end keys on the right-hand column. Modern ultrabooks got rid of them (despite there often being more than enough space for them) and it makes me really mad. Those are super-useful keys for coders and also for general web navigation.

After reading this article, I went back to take a closer look at the X1 keyboard, and actually gasped. No hardware Fn keys? Home/end replacing Caps (which I remap to ctrl)? Backspace/del next to each other? What were they thinking??

I'm so glad I didn't do an impulse buy on the X1, because my mind doesn't think to inspect the keyboard so closely. I would have returned it 10 seconds after opening the box. I'm going to have to look very closely now at the keyboards of new laptops I'm thinking of buying.

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> home/end keys

Actually, they're nearly useless if you use software/OS capable of Emacs-style keyboard navigation and develop a habit of using C-a/C-e shortcuts. (Especially with CapsLock rebound as Control.)

I like them specifically for reading web pages. When reading I can just rest my hand on the right side of the keyboard and browse with home/pgup/pgdown/end. Usually when I'm reading like this I'm not typing and so not in the mood for ctrl gymnastics.

While it doesn't remove the gymnastics requirement, a relatively nice alternative to webpage pgup/pgdn is shift-space/space.

Pressing the spacebar in a browser has the same effect as the PageDown key.

It's not emacs style, it comes at least from TENEX.

Unfortunately, the T420s seems to be the last Lenovo notebook with a decent keyboard[0], but even this one contains non-standard elements – most importantly the larger Esc and Del key, which, however, are actually quite useful. But I have to admit that even with these keys I actually like, I often end up pressing Insert rather than Delete on standard keyboards.

[0] http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/58683.jpg

Fn key is switched with Ctrl - this completely breaks my touchtyping. On last Lenovo I used there was no way to make Fn to be Ctrl, don't know if it was possible on T420. But with that little swap I can't call that keyboard decent.

On T530 you can do it from the BIOS settings. I have the weirdest problems with that though. If I touch-type I always use the Fn as Ctrl, but when I read a more complex shortcut and try to apply it by looking at the keyboard (like: Notepad++ XML format = Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B), I always use the "Ctrl" instead of Fn frist.

The Fn key has always been the leftmost key on Thinkpads, so I don’t really care about that. However, even my T410s has the option to swap Fn and Ctrl in the BIOS, so I would assume the T420s to have it, too.

I feel you. I use my desktop 80% of the time, touchtyping on my Das Keyboard. When I switch to my T430s my typing speed definitely drops for that reason.

I like how Asus put PgUp/PgDn/Home/End on Fn+Arrows, it really feels natural since their actions are just extended arrows. Convenient placement of Fn also helps. If only there was a right-hand Fn.

OSX does the same by default with ⌘ + arrow keys, and there is a command key right beside them.

For what it's worth the previous generation X1 Carbon has a "new style" keyboard, but with a completely standard layout. It feels great, too. If you don't mind older hardware, I'd thoroughly recommend it.

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