I'd like it with cream, sugar and an extra key, please.

February 8, 2008 4:31 AM

Will a laptop keyboard with a different layout (and a subtly different number of keys) be a good replacement for the currently caffeinated one?

Yesterday i spilled coffee on my old Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000 laptop.

Fortunately, it was a small quantity of espresso so the computer itself is undamaged, except for the keyboard, which, despite much cleaning and careful drying, appears to be dead on the left (cup) side and behaving weirdly on the right.

I'm considering purchasing a replacement keyboard on ebay (there's a few for that model), but I noticed that the US key layout is slightly different (expected) and with a key less than its Italian counterpart (unexpected).

I have a shorter space bar, which allows for a "<>" key immediately to the right of it (in desktop keyboards it's usually to the left of the Z).

I'm confident that - installing the new keyboard and using an IT layout on Windows - everything should work just fine, with a few key caps replaced from the old keyboard for extra comfort (accented letters, etc.) but what will be of the extra key? (it's somewhat important to code html).

I'd like to have a second opinion before proceeding with the purchase, thank you all.

posted by _dario to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I've got a dead 6000 with a keyboard that should still work. Mefi mail me, and it's yours.
posted by piro at 6:03 AM on February 8, 2008

Ah, wait... you're looking for IT, not US. Mine's US.
posted by piro at 6:04 AM on February 8, 2008

You want the proper keyboard.

I've done a lot of multilingual text input (in French, Spanish, and English). The keymap approach mostly works for the letters, but rarely works for all punctuation or accents. I believe this is because they sometimes change the actual scancode sent by the keys when they move them around, not just the physical location and the mapping to characters (so that the ? key on my French keyboard sends an actual '?' scancode, and not a 'M' scancode).
posted by Netzapper at 1:03 PM on February 8, 2008