The desktop icons are not stored in the display
Posted by dandy_g@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 66 comments
Two a classic stories of user not understanding how things work.
Many moons ago I was working at a small printing company as an in-house web developer/sysadmin/IT tech.
That day I was asked to install a new display for the front desk/customer support person. As I was fiddling with cables under the desk, she asked: Will you also move over my desktop background and desktop icons to the new display?
Trying hard to hold back laughter, I replied: Sure thing, but it will take some time.
Just another one of those days to remember and smile.
Another interesting one with same person was when she called me over with a complaint about her keyboard not working anymore. She needed to input order details into the order management software so it was an emergency.
I walked up and asked to show the issue. She was frantically hitting the numpad keys and said: See?! The keys stopped working!
I glanced at the keyboard indicator LEDs, hit the NumLock key and said: Try now!
She was taken aback by the easy fix but didn't understand who needs that stupid feature on a keyboard. Then I tried my best to explain the lock key functions. Needles to say, ScrollLock went completely over her head.
On the positive side, I got a big chocolate bar out of the ordeal because she thought she had broken the keyboard and was thankful for easy solution and extra education.
benjymous@reddit
I can honestly say in ~30 years of using modern PCs, I've never actually used Scroll Lock for anything. I just tried and can't find anywhere it actually performs any function on my current Win11 machine. (I read somewhere that Excel uses it?)
Mickenfox@reddit
The PC keyboard is the perfect evidence that no one in computing actually tries to change or improve anything if it has existed long enough.
fresh-dork@reddit
it works fine, and there are a ton of variants that simply don't get traction. a keyboard is a complex haptic device and attempting to replace it would mean retraining a billion people. so we don't. helps that the letter part is nearly optimal.
NewUserWhoDisAgain@reddit
Dont fix what isnt broken.
Mickenfox@reddit
Literally the worst attitude in software.
androshalforc1@reddit
I was just thinking ive never used scroll lock ( and don’t actually know what it does) and the only time i use num lock is to turn it on after accidentally turning it off.
himitsumono@reddit
The last couple of laptops I've bought have no NumLock key and nothing on the keyboard to indicate that it'd do anything if there were one.
On the other hand, I have a couple laptops that have full-up number pads like a regular keyboard. These are the bane of my existence. If you're used to using a laptop, you don't have to look at the keyboard to get your hands on the right keys, you just sort of center yourself against the screen and type.
Producing gibberish if the keyboard includes a number pad. Frickin' HATE the things!
minethulhu@reddit
For those taught to do touch typing, this is known as positioning your fingers on the home row keys. Fingers of the left hand on ASDF and right on JKL;. Keyboards will often have a raised nub on the F and J key to help with that. This might help orient on different keyboard layouts.
himitsumono@reddit
>> For those taught to do touch typing
Yep, I'm one of those, and it's exactly as you say.
Problem is, I also play guitar. Callused fingers don't feel those little bumplets so well. And I notice that they're way smaller they used to be. Designers going for sleek and smooth over functional. Sigh.
But you can buy some much more raised stick-on bumps; I've got these on the lappies with numpads. They help, but it still gets annoying when I subconsciously use the screen to orient my hands, and then the "pasties" remind me that "No, bubba, it's further over."
blind_ninja_guy@reddit
I'm blind, and I have started putting raised bumps on the f&j keys, because the bumps aren't as raised as they used to be on a lot of laptops. I've also put bumps on the F4 f8 and f12 keys to give the physical separation you might get on a real keyboard. Just take some tape and layer it on top of each other, or take a small piece of yarn and put it under a piece of tape so that it kind of raises out. Usually if you do it right you can still close the lid because there's enough room. I can usually feel the bumps that come with the laptop, but boy is it nice to not have to hunt. And it's also nice when touch typing to not have to count from the left or hope you hit the right one going that far from the home row.
fresh-dork@reddit
you'd probably hate the macs with their magic bar
Loading_M_@reddit
The bumps are also smaller due to the shrinking size of laptop keyboards. If they get too much larger, they might start hitting the screen when the laptop is closed.
That being said, this is really just a general problem when switching between laptop keyboards. My work and personal laptops have the Ctrl and Fn keys swapped, so every time I switch I have to remember which key is which. Usually I'm just confused why ctrl+c or some other key combo isn't working until I look down at the keyboard.
spaceraverdk@reddit
I for once bought a tkl keyboard. Haven't had the time to use it proper yet.
But I would probably love it.
Now to get a keychron numpad.
Responsible_Emu8879@reddit
I go the other way on this. laptops that don't have the number pad mess me up because I often key data using the number pad. and having largeish hands if the keyboard is too small my typing speed and accuracy falls greatly.
himitsumono@reddit
I hear you and totally get that. I used to do tons of slide work for the financial peeps at a large corp. Hours, days, weeks of pounding in massive numbers of ... well.. numbers. Doing it w/o the numpad would have been maddening.
This was on a desktop PC, though, so I could position the keyboard however I wanted to relative to the screen. And an external keyboard is also how I'm making the lappies-with-numpad usable for me.
But I will defend to the death (of maybe one of my old wired mice or something of equal value) your right to prefer numpaddified lappies! :-)
L_Dichemici@reddit
We have a loose numpad that you can connect to your laptop by USB. Very useful if you don't need it everyday. IF you still have USB-ports.
I do need a numpad most of the time because I work with numbers combined with -,_,+,(,),+,/,\,|,•,√, and because of alt+... It helps a lot that I know LaTeX too.
dandy_g@reddit (OP)
Yeh, modern OSes don't use it. The only time Scroll Lock is somewhat useful is in terminal to pause long scrolling output but that's also once in a blue moon. The same result can be accomplished using Ctrl+S to freeze fast scrolling text during something like a long rsync transfer.
davidkali@reddit
Oh god, I remember when the scroll was slow enough for scroll lock to be useful. I should try it when I see those insta terminal windows that pop up on login
nullpassword@reddit
If I remember right there used to be a pause key? Was that a thing or am I getting old?
fresh-dork@reddit
checked my keyboard. it's there, i don't use it for a damn thing unless i want something to map in a game
dandy_g@reddit (OP)
It very much is still a thing and works in the terminal emulators. I sometimes hit Pause or Ctrl+S in vim to jump back out if I need to reference something from the previous command output.
commentsrnice2@reddit
The only function I’ve found is it stopping me from selecting a different cell in my spreadsheet. I don’t know who keeps turning it back on but every time it takes me a few moments to remember how to “fix” the problem
rde42@reddit
I use Scroll Lock a lot. But not to lock scrolls! I have a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch so that I can switch between two different computers. Rather than reach over and use the switch, I tap Scroll Lock twice, then Enter. I also have 4 way and 8 way KVMs, and I just have to type a digit before Enter for those.
ontheroadtonull@reddit
Hold the dang phone here, did you just say you leave your scrolls unlocked?
Tyr0pe@reddit
Wait until this one learns about flywheel mice
reddits_aight@reddit
Since no one actually said what it's for; Scroll Lock switches the funding of the arrow keys from moving the cursor to scrolling the page.
Aln76467@reddit
It's great for spreadsheets.
R0tmaster@reddit
I use it every day, its one of my most used keys as its white I bind push to talk to, then rebind caps lock to scroll lock for an easy access push to talk button that doesn’t fuck up anything else or type anything
FoxtrotSierraTango@reddit
I've had some KVMs that use scroll lock to switch inputs.
Ill-Pomegranate9016@reddit
Last time I used it was on a game called Rogue - decades ago. Yes, the game that 'Rouge-likes' are named after. It made movement faster/easier
Head_Razzmatazz7174@reddit
The last time I used scroll lock was back in the DOS days when I was looking for an error in a long section of code that wasn't working like it should.
GuestStarr@reddit
Yes, excel and other spreadsheets.
_9a_@reddit
To be fair, on a standard keyboard, is there a reason for NumLock to exist?
Keyboards without a split num pad like on a laptop, I'll grant it's needed. But it's rather legacy at this point
mklimbach@reddit
And yet, modern computers don't have number lock on by default so when you go to enter your PIN or password, you screw it up upon restart.
BrainOnBlue@reddit
This is a BIOS setting on every computer I've touched for the last decade.
cvx_mbs@reddit
except Windows ignores that setting and turns numlock off by default since at least 20 years ago
jamoche_2@reddit
I worked at VMware on Fusion, and have mostly blanked out my memories of trying to sync the numlock state to Windows VMs.
hicow@reddit
I've had to fix it in the bios a few times, but after that, windows acts just fine with it
Tony_Penny@reddit
You can change that in the BIOS.
GuestStarr@reddit
And this is the reason I never use the numpad to enter my password. Or actually the reason was some obscure keyboard that acted strangely.
My passwords also don't include special characters whose placement on different keyboards could be different. Multi lingual keyboard doesn't encourage this. Sometimes, after an update or my finger slipping, there could be a wrong keyboard defaulting. Luckily this is nowadays rare.
muwave@reddit
That is only the case if you don't know enough magic to force it on after every boot.
blind_ninja_guy@reddit
I actually don't know why it was ever needed? It is used in one particular weird niche case. Screen readers for blind people use the number pad cursor keys for navigating various things without moving the actual physical focus. You can turn the numpad off to use the screen reader the way it was designed or turn the num pad on to type numbers. That's the only use I know for it though.
Terrible_Shirt6018@reddit
Num lock turns the numpad into arrow keys. Or you can set it to move the cursor.
oloryn@reddit
Some of us actually touch-type the number key row, and have no use for the numeric keypad. On all of my PCs, the BIOS is set up to come up with num lock off, as if I actually use the keypad, I'm using it in cursor-key mode.
ChalkyChalkson@reddit
I know some people who use it to quickly navigate and edit spreadsheets with one hand. But yeah, a literal dummy key like f20 would probably be more useful
henke37@reddit
F20 is a real key, it's just that most keyboards don't have it.
IntelligentExcuse5@reddit
On the cheaper keyboards, where they cannot fit all of the keys onto the front of the keyboard, the manufacturers sometimes put keys on the back as well. (I only wrote this to see if you would pick up your keyboard to check).
Existential_Racoon@reddit
I actually had one that had programmable keys that were like... the bumpers for a game controller? Never figured out the use case.
ChalkyChalkson@reddit
I meant dummy as in "doesn't really do anything by default" I actually have F20 setup on my redox and use it so it was what I used as an example
TheThiefMaster@reddit
Yeah it quite clearly predates the separate arrow keys and insert/home/etc block.
Quite a lot of laptops don't have a numpad at all. I had one that hid a numpad in the main keyboard (toggled by numlock of course), using the same 789 keys as the regular keyboard number row, which was inventive.
TinyNiceWolf@reddit
Your mainframe keyboard image says it's from the mid-1980s. So it would be well after after the original IBM PC (1981).
The original IBM PC's keyboard had a combined cursor/numeric keypad. That's why IBM included a Num Lock key, because the numeric pad normally served as the cursor keys.
It wasn't until 1985 that IBM introduced a keyboard with a cursor keypad that was separate from a numeric keypad.
While some terminals for use with mainframes had been built with dedicated cursor keys, going back to the 1970s, the specific idea of arranging them into a cursor pad seems to come from Digital Equipment Corporation's LK201 keyboard, which was designed for their VT220 terminal, released in 1982. (Terminals were used to interact with mainframe computers.)
IBM then copied that layout for their Model M keyboard, bringing it to the PC world in 1985. But for four years, PCs only had a cursor pad that could also be used to enter numbers (via Shift or Num Lock).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK201
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard
dandy_g@reddit (OP)
I have to agree. Can't remember when I last used the cursor keys on numpad.
All my laptops have a full keyboard but then again I'm not a typical user and need horsepower which comes with extra bulk and surface area real estate.
OGNovelNinja@reddit
I use them all the time. When I switch to numbers for something I never remember to switch it back before I start typing something I didn't expect.
unus-suprus-septum@reddit
The number of times I've astounded students by pressing the insert key when their text was being overwritten.
blind_ninja_guy@reddit
To be fair, that's an evil feature that should be destroyed forever.
EkriirkE@reddit
Reminds me of my experience in high school, the network administrator had me banned from the school computers for plugging an offline computer's monitor into my laptop because i was risking spreading viruses
Random_persondude@reddit
the… “network administrator”…
EkriirkE@reddit
Basically the sole IT person for the school. She also banned me another year for going out of my way to show her how I was able to browse the entire school district's filesystem from my student account.
blind_ninja_guy@reddit
Ah, yes. I think many of us have learned that lesson in high school from people who were illiterate with tech. That's such a difference between high school and college. When I was in college, one of the students had a professor in the computer science class and found a vulnerability in the learning management system. He told the professor hey with this vulnerability I'm pretty sure I could change people's grades. She didn't get mad, no she set up a whole nother fake class so that the students could find as many vulnerabilities in it as possible in a safe environment, and made it the whole thing where the students who were part of the interested in the security group could find and responsibly report vulnerabilities to the creator of the software.
MariaValkyrie@reddit
Derptalogists should have that specimen studied.
commentsrnice2@reddit
I hate scroll lock. Let me use the arrow keys as arrow keys tyvm!!
devilsadvocate1966@reddit
Can you power off the PC?
Ok, it's powered off now (seconds later)
Power it back on please
THE SAME THING'S ON THE SCREEN!
OK......
Dakduif@reddit
That first one got me laughing. It sounds like such a wholesome question somehow. 😄 And your reaction was good. None of it was a lie, even though it happens way differently than the user anticipated. :P
That second one reminds me of my late grandfather. I once taught him about fixing the issue where all your keyboard symbols are suddenly different. Happens when you accidentally hit Shift+Ctrl together. He once phoned me just to ask what the fix was again because he forgot and all the symbols were fucked again. He was so happy that it all worked again immediately after. It's so simple, but his relief was immense!
dandy_g@reddit (OP)
It was a small company and a close-knitted team of about seven. Everyone was doing multiple jobs and tried their best to support each other.
It was a great change for me after burning out while working for a soul-crushing corporation.
henke37@reddit
It's not extra education if nobody educated them to begin with.
dandy_g@reddit (OP)
To be fair, I don't remember ever learning what the other Lock keys do in school. I learned on my own on my first IBM XT with Model M keyboard.