I bought a new keyboard today. My old one died months ago and I was using my archaic (mid 1990’s!) one as a ‘temporary’ back up. It was a good keyboard in its day, but it’s definitely on its last legs, with some keys sticking and the command key not always responding. I’ve got too much on my plate right now to be working with an unreliable keyboard.
My last ‘good’ keyboard was a Microsoft Comfort Curve. Do y’all see the irony in that? I’m an Apple gal except when it comes to peripherals. The Apple keyboard and not-so-mighty mouse suck (my not-so-technical opinion, of course!). I was thrilled with my Microsoft keyboard. It was ergonomic, clicked pleasantly, and was spill proof. My only complaints with it were that the ‘hot keys’ don’t work with OS X, that the command key is where the option key should be (and vice versa), and the ù is in a really odd spot (to the left of the 1 above the tab); does anyone have a pinky long enough to reach up there?!
Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboard
One day, though, the whole left side of it just stopped working. I’d only paid about $40 for it and had had it for over two years, so I accepted the loss. I type a lot and am hard on my keyboards, so I try to buy them cheaper and am accepting that they need to be replaced regularly.
All that to say that when I got to Staples today and learned that the Microsoft Comfort Curve is now the cheapest Mac-compatible keyboard they carry (with a price drop to less than $30 with tax!), I decided that it’s going to be my official keyboard from now on!
When I brought it home, I didn’t have to shut down to install the new keyboard. I just unplugged the old one (that I still can’t bring myself to trash!), plugged in the new, and started to type. Macs are just so easy. Getting reaccustomed to the Comfort Curve’s layout took a few minutes and then my fingers felt like they had come home. The command key thing, however, is going to take some time to get readjusted to. 🙂
(no, this post was NOT sponsored by Microsoft or Staples! 😀 )
I wish I thought the Mac was so easy. I loved the XP operating system and there are so many things I can’t do on the Mac, but know are possible. I have a terrible time getting a photo from iPhoto to post in a blog, whereas it was a piece of cake with XP. I do love the Mac keyboard though – it is so easy for a fast typist to use, and the backlit feature is marvelous.
It amazes me how PC people find Macs complicated when doing everything but connecting to a WEP encrypted wireless network or a dial up modem is a million times easier than doing so on a Windows machine. PCs make things so complicated that users approach Macs with the same attitude. They expect something to be convoluted and end up making it so. I had that problem for the first six months or so of owning my first Mac and the the lightbulb went on. You really do need to reapproach how you deal with computers when you’re on a Mac. Very, very little is like on a PC. I remember my biggest challenge at first was adding and removing applications. I gummed it up every single time until I clued in that ALL I had to do was drag the app to my ‘Applications’ folder to install it and to drag it to the trash to remove it. That was it for me, I was a convert.
I’m not sure exactly how you’re uploading photos with iPhoto. What I do is select my roll, resize it, and export it to a folder that I then upload via WordPress’ interface. It takes a matter of seconds (well, depending on how fast my connection is!).
When I was on Blogger and in my early days on WordPress I would use iPhoto to add captions to all my photos and then export them as an HTML page, but I’ve since decided to stop doing that an instead import galleries directly into my posts.
A backlit feature would be useless for me since I can’t remember the last time I actually looked at my keyboard. 🙂
I type so slow. I have to look to type every letter. As a kid I took typing class and kept getting my fingers stuck between the keys. I am a “point and click” kind of gal, just give me a good mouse with a scroll wheel and I am happy.
If I have to ‘hunt and peck’, I get so frustrated because it takes so darn long. 🙂
I did very poorly in typing class. We learned on typewriters while I had a computer at home. The typewriter was sluggish compared to a keyboard, so I was always faster than the machine and got tons of errors. Plus, I’m used to typing on a French-Canadian layout keyboard and slow down a bit on an English layout. Combine the two and I was lucky to get 25WPM in class when I was consistently hitting 60WPM+ at home. I was smart enough to know it was the skill, not the grade that mattered, and I did a ton of practising at home. Paid off. Typing is one of my favourite things to do; it is very meditative.
I hate mice and prefer to tab if I can. My biggest pet peeve is software that’s meant for data entry that requires you to mouse between fields.