numlock problem / Inspiron 1440

Bought a refurbed Inspiron 1440 a few months ago for my mother-in-law who lives down in Florida. She's been very happy with it, until just recently, when "a bunch of the keys don't work right anymore", and I'm pretty sure it's just that numlock got turned on.

If anyone could post a nice picture of their 1440's keyboard, I'd be very grateful! Dell's pages are just stupid flash, and I can't get a close enough zoom on the keyboard anyways.

 

This picture from an eBay listing...



It looks like it doesn't even have a numlock?

Could be a picture of a different keyboard, though.

EDIT: This picture from another eBay listing...



Seems to support the suggestion that there's no numlock...

 

Which keys are no longer functioning?

Although there is no num lock button on the keyboard, it can still be turned on - either via external keyboard or the onscreen keyboard in windows. However, the keyboard on this notebook does not have keys which are dedicated to become number keys when numlock is on, so it wouldn't impact usage of the keyboard in the slightest. I have tested this with my Inspiron 1545 - which has pretty much an identical layout as far as I can tell.

 

Interesting. All I've heard so far was from my wife, who mentioned that her mom said a couple of keys didn't work right, and mentioned the "I" key specifically. I just presumed that it had to be numlock getting turned on. Guess I will have to talk to her directly, to see what's really going on.

Thanks for the comments!

* update *

The Windows Reboot Fairy cured her keyboard problems.

 

I bought a 1440 a couple days ago and I never even noticed that it has no numeric keypad (embedded or otherwise). As far as I can tell, there is no numlock function at all. Strange. But, since I absolutely never use numeric keypads, I don't miss the "keypad" feature.

This laptop was only $449 at BB, so I'm not complaining. It has a solid optical drive, a good display, about 5 hrs battery life and a surprisingly strong CPU. It also has an extensively configurable BIOS and is easy to upgrade. It doesn't come with a lot of lights and extra features but for the price, I'm very happy with it. It benchmarks faster than a Core 2 Duo T6500 and you can "feel" it when you use it. A strong CPU makes all the difference.

I've had lots of laptops and this one is a very good deal. It's not fancy, just a basic, simple consumer laptop but it has a lot of power for the money. It's not for gaming, of course, but the 4500MHD GPU does just fine for any kind of video. I played a 720p (h.264/.mp4) movie rip on it and it was just stunning. Smooth as silk.

I highly recommend doing a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit and just download the touchpad and camera drivers from Dell. All the rest of the Dell stuff is unnecessary. Actually, even the camera stuff is unnecessary. Skype and IM programs see the camera with the default Windows driver. The touchpad driver is good to have because it has a feature to automatically disable the touchpad when you have a mouse plugged in.