Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Give me backspace or give me... backspace

Well.  I have recently discovered I am set in my ways.  So very set in my ways.  I have tried to change; I have explored different options.  But, I admit it.  I am, well, I'm a pc'er.

And even as I write this I realize I haven't looked at any "new" pc laptop keyboards.  What if they  have eliminated the backspace button also?  Eeep!

You see, in my old fashioned keyboards, to erase a character (or multiple characters) before the cursor, one pressed the backspace button.  It was an arrow, pointing to the left.  In the apple laptop and the mobile keyboard devices I have, this is now the delete button.  It does still erase characters before the cursor (to the left.)

However, on my old fashioned and very much missed pc laptop keyboard, the del button, in a word processing program, would erase characters BEHIND the cursor.  One could change the beginning of a sentence from the beginning of a sentence, or remove that pesky extra space after the period.  One could just hit del if one decided rejoin the next sentence to the current paragraph (very handy, the way I do my editing.).  And, if one clicked on the left of the letter being changed instead of the right, one could still change the word.

One didn't have to get all fiddly with exact placement of the blue arrow so one could correct one letter in a word on a really small screen!

So.  To sum up.  I like my word processing program (WordPerfect).  I'm going to find a way to return to it.  I like my data base (Access).  I'm going to find a way to return to it.  And I love my backspace/ del buttons.  So, bye bye all you minimalistic keyboards.  Hello pc laptop.

It's true.  You don't know what you're missing until you've sprained your finger hitting a button that is no longer there.


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