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From: nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Amiga Keyboard Disasters
Message-ID: <660@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 17:50:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.660
Posted: Wed Sep  4 17:50:34 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Sep-85 07:43:07 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 34

If you believe the photo on the front of Amiga World:

1. There are two right-arrow cursor keys and none pointing down; great
   for going East, but hard to go South.  The same keyboard is shown on
   page 23 -- one suspects all the pictures are of the self-same, one &
   only prototype.  I wonder if this indicates the quality control to be
   expected in the production versions ...

2. The caps lock key is snuggled neatly between the "A" key and the
   Ctrl key, so you can mash it by mistake really often  -- like every
   time you try to type Ctrl-C.

3. There's a nifty pair of keys marked "A" (for Amiga?) immediately to the
   left and right of the space bar, INSIDE the pair of Alt keys.  Know what
   those do?  They RESET THE COMPUTER!  Now, there are only a few programs
   that ask you to type Alt - anything, but DON'T MISS or you'll lose
   all your work to date.

4. Accounting types will love that keypad for entering numbers by feel --
   until they reach for the "+" key to add and find it missing.  There *is*
   a keypad key labeled "Enter," but on my HP Calculator "Enter" and "+"
   do very different things.

Considering the screams of anguish that arose when the IBM PC Keyboard
was first shown about the placement of the "|\" key to the left of the "z",
I would have expected at least some comment on the rotten design bugs ...
uh, features of the Amiga keyboard.

Ah, but I forgot.  You type with a mouse, right?
-- 
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDU