Switching the functionality of Fn & Ctrl buttons..

This idea was spawned after reading this thread.

Would it be possible to switch the functionality of the Fn and Control buttons on the right side of the keyboard? I hate where the Control button is placed and I really don't know what they were thinking with this. Does anyone know if/how this could be accomplished?

 

Braddd, when I was looking for ways to get the ThinkVantage button customized, I found some utilities for keyboard remapping that might do the trick.

There is one called 'sharpkeys' located here: http://www.randyrants.com/sharpkeys/ but it looks like remapping the function button is a crapshoot. He says it works on some but not on others. It's best to go through his forum more closely and see if it's been answered: http://www.randyrants.com/2006/07/sharpkeys_211.html he's very helpful and responds to questions quick.

It seems like he has a huge problem with hitting the Caps Lock key and I can't say I disagree - I might just try it for the same reason.

Other people were looking for that feature and were pointed to the autohotkey utility here: http://www.autohotkey.com/ but was unsure if it works to swap Fn and Ctrl

Hope that helps

 

Well, I had this issue with the placement of the Fn key as well on the Thinkpads, and after trying various methods to remap the Fn key to no avail, I settled on switching the Ctrl with Caps Lock.

It took some getting used to, but now it's second nature and even more ergonomic since I wouldn't even need to move my hands away from the palm rests.

The tool I used is the remapkey.exe included with Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools (which is a free download). Just install the rktools.exe downloaded from Microsoft website and look for remapkey.exe in the install directory.

The tool is straight forward to use, just drag the keys to the new location you want and then save the configuration. After a reboot it should work perfectly (be sure to run the exe as admin in Vista, otherwise the registry settings will not be applied).

Hope that helps.

PS. Another good tool to use is the Lenovo keyboard customizer, where I set the delay for Caps Lock and F1 keys higher to avoid accidental presses.

 

Autohotkey definitely doesn't work for thinkpads. The fn key does not register like the other keys, and is handled in a deeper level than the other keys. You pretty much can swap any key other than the fn key and its functions.