I need to swap Fn and Ctrl button..

yesterday I have time to take a look many notebook and I had plan to purchase one.

Unfortunatly, I notice some notebooks have FN keyboard button on the position of left CTRL button. Well, the left CTRL button move one position right after the FN button.

I had use some notebooks with these keyboard layout and it makes me sick.. I can't use keyboard shortcut at all because my hands always think ctrl button must locate on the below most-left of the keypad. (well.. now it's a Fn button..)
and I can't copy - paste as I intend to do.. maybe annoy..

Excuse me, I would like to ask you guys here.. anybody know how do I change or swap those two buttons altogether please? I mean just swap ctrl to Fn and Fn to Ctrl. If anything could.. it'll make me happy because it'll work functional like my every desktop keyboard be and I can use shortcut again.

Thanks..

 

if the keys are the same size you could do it. You would have to change the keyboad layout though and reprogram both keys. I find most keyboards have different sized ctr and Fn keys however, so that wouldnt be possible. The only other thing I would suggest would be to go external keyboard. Something wireless is nice for typing from accross the room

 

As far as I understand it, this may help you. I haven't tried it but it's description looks promising.
Even if this one does not help, there are a few other programs that can reassign certain keys from any keyboard. You just have to try and see which one works for you.
If you want to physically relocate the FN and Ctrl keys, well I'm not sure you can do so. In any case, an attempt to do so will void your warranty.

 

I don't believe people have been successful in swapping the Fn and Ctrl buttons. The Fn key function can't be changed by normal Windows applications; the manufacturer likely needs to release a new BIOS in order to change it.

 

lazybum131 is on the money, it's really hard to do, since the FN button in implimented into BIOS, and not into Windows. So you need to modify BIOS to do that.

For example, FN does not react to sticky keys, because it doesn't exist in Windows, only in the BIOS, either that, or something similiar.

 

most notebooks have the Ctrl key left of the Fn key.

i don't know what notebooks you were looking at, but it's so common i'm surprised you ran into any that had it reversed at all.

how many notebooks did you look at and what models where they?

 

All ASUS laptops have FN at bottom left

Actually besides them, I can't think of any other brand which has all their laptops contain FN at bottom left...

 

MSI


Usually those darned barebones >.<

 

Lenovo/IBM as well. Which is a pretty big consideration since Thinkpad keyboards have the reputation of being the best.

I think it's a case of the vocal minority, if IBM/Lenovo really had a lot of people complaining about the Fn position they 1) wouldn't have the 'best laptop keyboard' reputation and 2) probably would've changed the layout already.

 

My Gateway(Quanta model possibly?) has the left Fn key on the bottom left(the right one's just to the right of the up arrow key...which causes a shorter right Shift key, which some hate...I adapted to it after about 2 weeks).

 

yeah, the lenovo/IBM has been setup that way for a long time. the keyboard mapper utility cannot remap it. doesn't bother me, as I have typed with that configureation a lot more than others.

 

It seems this FN key is a bit more than just a key...
Here's a funny page by an angry Dell user who got frustrated in attempts to remap the key.

 

All I checked.. (spend lot of month for it.)

- BenQ
- Asus
- Lenovo
- Fujitsu
All above brand have Fn on the bottom left of the keyboard.

all notebook that I can purchase maybe..
- hp/compaq
- acer
- sony
- toshiba

these above model have Ctrl on the bottom left of the keyboard..

 

I just got my T61, and realized the Fn key is in the wrong spot and can't be remapped/swapped with the Ctrl key. Very annoying, and now I wish I had gone with a Dell.

 

Hi All,

Off Topic, let me know if there is a better place. I have an eee 1000HA, never use F1 thru F12 keys but use brightness (Fn + F5 ,F6 and F7) and volume control (Fn + F10, F11 and F12), wireless lan (Fn + F2), (anyway you get the idea) all the time. I want to switch the function of the Fn key that the default key action of the F1 thru F12 is the hotkey action and if I want to use the original F# function I press FN + F#. Anybody with any ideas, hint, suggestions pls let me know.

 

Samsung R20s have it at the bottom left, and a few other samsung models (most of R series, some X series etc...)