Home-End Handicapped S580

This S580 is giving me hard time, why did they set Home and End keys as function keys on arrows? Each time you need them, you have to press Fn which is at the other corner and then left or right arrow for Home or End. End and Home are really handy keys in apllications like Excel, and you really do need them on one touch keys... For instance there is a short cut in Excel (which IS a short cut for a regular keyboard or also for other laptops) to select a very long column, you have to hold shift, press end and give the direction with the arrow and thats it. But with this keybord, while holding the shift, you have to press Fn, then right arrow, and then you have to release Fn and then give the direction with another arrow... That's a very confusing long cut...

I never use these silly windows keys... I think nobody uses those keys, they are just wasting space for those keys. I dont know if its possible to assign end and home to other keys? Is it possible? I really need some good ideas to overcome this problem, or it will take a very long time to get used to this.

 

Way to go blacktiger

Şaka bi yana ben de aynı dertten muzdaribim...

I also dislike the fact that those two keys, actually all four of them are Fn handicapped.

I do use the Windows key from time to time but I would gladly swap my keyboard configuration, losing my Windows key in favor of Home-End keys.

 

Unfortunately that sort of thing is really common in notebooks this size and smaller. Personally I use both the windows keys and the navigation keys but it still annoys me that they don't squeeze these import items onto dedicated keys. However after looking at a lot of notebooks I decided that this disadvantage was outweighed by the numerous advantages of the S580. And frankly pretty much all notebooks have some quirks in their keyboard layout which require a little adaptation. I figure I can get used to chording the nav keys. Time will tell.

By the way, I have spent quite a bit of time with Thinkpads that lack Windows keys and it made me nuts. At least the S580 has the nav keys. They're just harder to grab.

 

No offense but would you rather hit the Fn key for hitting Enter, backspace, delete and insert?

I would guess they chose the page up/down and home/end to do that because of all of those keys on that side, they are probably the least used by the majority of users.

I too use home/end quite a bit, and you do get used to the Fn key (at least I did).

 

I like the configuration on the V505 better. They put the fn key right next to the arrow keys, so I can just use 1 hand to use the home, end, page up, page down keys.
I wish they'd use the extra unused space above the left and right arrows for fn.

 

Or they could have used that space for two keys: Home/PgUp and End/PgDown. That would have fixed part of the problem. But I know I'll get used to it. I'm constantly using weird Alt- and Ctrl- hotkey combinations that I don't remember memorizing.

 

i don't like the keys also, i think they can learn from other companies.
For example, Dell gives the full size key board. they did put Home-End key, Page up/down, but they make it smaller to half size of a regular key size. So two keys (Home & End keys) can fit in one regular key space.
1 regulare key size = 2 smaller key
then Insert/Delete, Home/End, and Page Up/Down will be 6 smaller keys, and they can fit in 3 regulare big keys.
Or they can do what other laptop or PDA, using a wheel at side. and people can just roll the wheel.

 

I use my notebook daily with various applications and to be honest I've never really frequently used the End or Page Up/Down keys. On the contrary lie Songdog I can't stand a keyboard without a Windows key. Win-D for Desktop is one of the most frequent combinations I use. At the end it's different for every person and I guess due to the small 13inch form factor its a fair compromise.
Are there any other similiar size notebooks wich have dedicated End and PgUp/Down keys out there?

 

The Dell Latitude X1 does, I believe, and it's just got a 12" screen, but it's the exception in that respect.

 

Ah you're right, thats not too bad.
Well there is theoretically space above the left and right arrow keys on the Vaio S keyboard but I guess Sony didn't put any keys there to improve usability of the arrow keys.