Most useless key on the keyboard and what it should be instead

[German_John]

Having just ordered a 60% keyboard, I've been wondering: what's the most useless (or least useful, if you're an optimist) key on a keyboard? I mean, do we really need s? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

For my mother it ought to be backspace (she always uses delete and to this day doesn't know that there's a backspace key, or what it does, despite explanations and using it on Android) or enter, or anything on the numpad (besides enter, which she thinks does something different from the other enter...)

For a friend of mine it must be shift, because he only uses caps lock. And has that Windows Audio thing for it, too.

 

For me, it's clearly Caps Lock. Even if I write a sentence in all caps (e.g. for headers in papers) I will almost always use shift instead. There is no reason for me to have this key on the keyboard.

I'd much rather have an Fn, or better yet, Fn-lock there, with smaller keyboards and laptops getting more prominent, or, all colemak like, backspace. Or really anything, because I use pretty much every other key on the board, but Caps Lock only gets in the way.

 

What about you guys?

[Vavetti]

Scroll lock, like what does it even do?

[German_John]

Scroll lock, like what does it even do?

Yeah, scroll lock is completely obsolete today. It used to switch the arrow key functionality from moving to cursor to scrolling, and some break/pause stuff on old IBM stuff. It doesn't bother me as much as it's just an Fn on Print Screen on my laptop.

 

So usefulness is lower than caps lock, annoyingness is lower though (I'd say)

[yuh25]

For me Caps lock then the Menu key.

[ThinkWithPortals]

Scroll lock, and all of these:

 

 

Just never find myself using them... dunno what I'd change them too though. Macros?

[mjKneafsey]

Scroll lock, and all of these:

 

 

Just never find myself using them... dunno what I'd change them too though. Macros?

 

I found myself using them when using Word at university, when my PC was wanting to do it's own format thing.

 

For me the most useless button is the backslash button. I've never used it, and for me it just ruins the enter button when located like where it is in the image. I like having a tall enter button.

[ThinkWithPortals]

For me the most useless button is the backslash button. I've never used it, and for me it just ruins the enter button when located like where it is in the image. I like having a tall enter button.

-snip-

 

I'm the same, I get frustrated when I try to type on a keyboard without a tall enter key, I just keep hitting backslash...

[mjKneafsey]

I'm the same, I get frustrated when I try to type on a keyboard without a tall enter key, I just keep hitting backslash...

 

It's one of the reasons I don't own a mechanical keyboard as they all seem to go with the style I posted in the image. The Steelseries 6GV2 is the only one I've found with a tall enter key.

[German_John]

-snip-

I use delete when I accidentally position the cursor in front of whatever I want to kill instead of behind it. And I use PgUp and Down when reading pdfs for uni, I can just skip to the next page.

 

 

-snip-

 

-snip-

I also prefer iso, probably because i've only once seen a German ANSI keyboard (on a 2003 thinkpad).

but, prepare for the horror:

 

 

 

That's what I use at work.

Look at that enter key

Look at that backspace.

Look at # and ' (it should be where the enter key is too long)

Can you imagine how annoying it is to write in English, want to use an apostrophe and do shift+enter every goddamn time?

[German_John]

It's one of the reasons I don't own a mechanical keyboard as they all seem to go with the style I posted in the image. The Steelseries 6GV2 is the only one I've found with a tall enter key.

In non-English layouts, there is basicaly only ISO (tall enter). I might actually prefer ANSI so I could exchange my keycaps, but the layout is also different (see picture of keyboard of horror).

If you can get used to some of your stuff being somewhere else, try a UK iso keyboard!

[ThinkWithPortals]

It's one of the reasons I don't own a mechanical keyboard as they all seem to go with the style I posted in the image. The Steelseries 6GV2 is the only one I've found with a tall enter key.

Really? I've seen several with tall enter keys. My own CM Storm QF Ultimate has one. I find that most UK retail versions of the boards have the layout with the tall enter key.

 

-snip-

Oh dear lord. Can you ask your employer if you can bring your own keyboard?

[German_John]

Oh dear lord. Can you ask your employer if you can bring your own keyboard?

I could just do that, my employer doesn't give a toss about anything and I barely ever see him. But I refuse to connect a good keyboard to a pc that is so old and messed up that it has serious trouble running XP (yes, we use XP at work) and cannot handle more than 4 open tabs in Chrome.  

Also, there's no wifi, so my laptop isn't a good substitute... a colleague used to bring an ethernet cable to hook up his macbook to the router.

[Mo5]

F11... seriously. Have you ever used F11?

[ThinkWithPortals]

I could just do that, my employer doesn't give a toss about anything and I barely ever see him. But I refuse to connect a good keyboard to a pc that is so old and messed up that it has serious trouble running XP (yes, we use XP at work) and cannot handle more than 4 open tabs in Chrome.

Also, there's no wifi, so my laptop isn't a good substitute... a colleague used to bring an ethernet cable to hook up his macbook to the router.

Sounds like a pretty crappy situation, sorry man

[ThinkWithPortals]

F11... seriously. Have you ever used F11?

No, aside from it being Volume Up on my KB.

[German_John]

 

F11... seriously. Have you ever used F11?

I usually give F keys a pass because lots of manufacturers but fn stuff on there. But yeah, no, it's just annoying to have that happen when you slip up from 0 and don't know what's going on for a while

 

 

Sounds like a pretty crappy situation, sorry man 

It's fine, I get minimum wage but hardly do anything (small cinema, during the movies there's absolutely nothing to do). I can deal with shit computers.

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

The pause break button and the scroll lock button. I have no idea what either of these are for.

[German_John]

The pause break button and the scroll lock button. I have no idea what either of these are for.

Scoll lock see above

Pause/Break is pretty useful in command line stuff. I mostly use it when I do long ass ping sessions to check on the WiFi in University, it shows you statistics without stopping the ping.

[KE2012]

The alt-gr (usually alt now) on the right side of the keyboard. Never use it and don't know anyone who does.

[Sir Asvald]

Scroll lock, and all of these:

Just never find myself using them... dunno what I'd change them too though. Macros?

I use the home and end, it's useful when I'm typing in word. Page up and down can be used when my scroll on my mouse it messed up.

Delete isn't needed as much

[jameshumphries47]

i think the alt gr and the second ctrl buttons are useless! thats all really

[SansVarnic]

F5-12 (I never use more than the first 4)

Scroll Lock

Print Screen/Sysq

Pause/Break

Num Lock (should be on by default anyhow)

Caps Lock

Right Alt

Right Ctrl

Win button

Menu button

 

AnyKey (I have a keyboard with one it was a FN key back in the day) 

[SpaceNugget]

Pause\Break is really the only key that I never use. Usually I use f12 to take screenshots so scroll lock\printscrn is also mostly useless.

[don_svetlio]

Tild key - should be a macro that sends you to porn hub

[Marvzl1357]

Scroll lock, and all of these:

 

 

Just never find myself using them... dunno what I'd change them too though. Macros?

 

These are useful as fuck for navigating long lines of anything (especially code). Home brings you to the start of the line, End brings you to the end, page up is faster than up/down/scrolling through a webpage. Insert...not really useful, terrifying if anything as when you accidentally hit it your text just starts getting overwritten as you type. Delete...well, it's useful sometimes, especially when combined with home.

 

I found myself using them when using Word at university, when my PC was wanting to do it's own format thing.

 

For me the most useless button is the backslash button. I've never used it, and for me it just ruins the enter button when located like where it is in the image. I like having a tall enter button.

 

Backslash is used on some compilers and terminals (like MinGW) to navigate around your drive directory (Ignore previous statement I'm dumb) and | is used in some languages (c for example) in a few ways as logical OR operations, piping and some other less used stuff, but is still very much useful.

Edit: How could I forgot backslash as an escape character to indicate newline \n, null byte(string terminator) \0, tab \t etc

 

Scroll lock on the other hand...I forgot where I saw it but even the ceo of a keyboard manufacturing company (may have been cm) doesn't even know why they still include it. They said it was for legacy reasons and that's it.