Submitted 1 year ago by jordanlund@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.
Another useless key? Use Scroll lock or SysRq for that. Or even better, reuse that stupid “menu” key. They’ll cram one more key to the left of the spacebar and make ctrl, alt, and windows keys smaller. Or change their order.
Bruh how am I gonna lock my arrow keys for screen navigation in Excel then??
You mean i dont have to arrow each cell to move the view?
Scroll lock is still super useful for me, maybe they could just use the right control key.
I’m sure more people use right control than scroll lock.
Hey, I use my menu key as Compose!
I use the menu key all the time… It’s very handy to avoid using the mouse.
Just another key to make grandma ask “OK, what does this do?”
Don’t worry about it grandma, just be sure not to accidentally press it when you’re fragging noobs.
Games will disable it during play, just as they do for the windows key
Or more likely she’ll accidentally press it and call you in a panic thinking she’s been hacked and wondering why her computer is talking to her.
Welp, time to disable TWO keys on my keyboard.
Just rebind them?
It’s weirdly difficult to remap the “office” key so that pressing it won’t open an ad for ms office 365 and pressing office+L won’t open linkedin.com, and a few more equally valuable core OS features.
In the end I just had to grab a small bit of C code from GitHub, compile it, move the exe to the startup folder, have Windows Defender yell at me for having obviously installed a particularly nasty brand of trojan, and make Windows Defender put the executive I had just compiled back.
But really, I deserve this for using a Microsoft natural keyboard in the first place.
I bought my first gaming keyboard like five years ago and thought the Windows Key Lock button was a Windows Store button for the longest time thinking it was the windows logo in a shopping bag
I’m an idiot
Lmao that’s great
Even scroll lock has been used more. Nobody will want your AI crap, microsoft, not even with a dedicated key.
I can guarantee there is a significant number of people who do want more AI crap.
Hell if it was done ethically and with user privacy as a core tenant of its implementation I would probably love having convenient access to AI tools like that… But this is Microsoft so I think I’m gonna instead go the opposite direction and add this to the list of reasons my next PC will be Linux
Saying nobody wants AI is like saying nobody wants the internet a few decades ago. Before you know it, it’ll be the interface to everything you do with a computer.
Out of interest though, what specifically is it that you don’t like?
Microsoft. Thats what I dont like.
Oh, and about the internet comparison. The internet was and is actually useful, I don’t see any serious tasks AI assistants are helpful with today. And there were keyboards with dedicated “internet” keys. I don’t see them now.
Have you played with AI tools yet?
I use my voice assistant daily, I take pictures with my phone, and I search said pictures with text queries. As for generating bullshit pictures or untrue information, I don’t have much use for that.
please don’t. if you knew how many times the windows key is pressed by accident…
I have pressed it more than a few times lol, but I also use it alllllllllll the time. I just press it and type in whatever program i wanna open. Faster than clicking on an icon. A registry edit to disable bing search definitely made it way nicer too. Now no web results show up
Use i3-wm with linux and it’s gonna be the only key you use :p
Also it is useful in Windows. I find myself using it in combination with D (minimize all windows) and L (lock the screen), or just by itself to search for apps.
Win-L and Win-R are the only combos I use.
Of fucking course lol. The cortana key
Gross
It’s the context menu key all over again
That one is actually useful and I use it every day.
Can we also talk about stupid keyboard manufacturers putting media functions and whatnot on the F keys, but then requiring me to hold Fn to use it as a regular F key? Nobody wants to go Fn+Alt+F4 to close a window. What the hell?
It’s because executives don’t even know what the regular function keys are for, since the only program they ever use is Outlook. The media controls are much more useful to them.
And as everyone knows, executives are the only people who buy laptops. So it makes sense to cater to them.
Yeah that’s unacceptable. You can probably fix it in software but still unacceptable.
On my mechanical keyboard, I mapped my most used programs to de F butttons, with the Ctrl+Alt+F key combination. At work we have a pretty good quality printer, so I printed the icons and taped it above the keys. It’s a little janky but it works really well.
Your keyboard lets you press Alt with function keys? That’s pretty nice.
Context menu key is really useful. :D
I would say it can be useful. 😹 I rarely used it and can always hit shift f10 now that it’s gone. I expect a similar experience with a copilot key.
I use Linux, and I actually like the idea. Not because of the Copilot bullshit, but because I’ve always wanted a real hyper key.
Isn’t that just super / win key ?
Nope, there used to be a fuckton of modifiers on early keyboards. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/…/Space-cadet.jpg
It is my understanding that, because of the keyboard on a system that hasn’t been used in 50 years, Unix-like systems understand 6 modifier keys: Shift, Alt, Ctrl, Super, Hyper and Meta.
Linux binds the “Windows” key on a typical PC keyboard to either Super or Meta. Seems to depend on the distro. In either case, in practice it’s used to bind shortcuts and macros similar to how the Windows key works in Windows, a single tap opens the app menu, holding it as a modifier key is usually bound to shortcuts that talk to the desktop environment rather than the active application.
you could use the fn key on any QMK keyboard for that tho. or any F key. or build a keyboard with one extra key. anything else.
Is it supposed to look like a curled up bandaid?
Eeew, now that’s all I can see.
If they could just make it like the ⌘ command key on macOS it wouldn’t be so bad, but of course, they’re going to make it just like the goddamn Windows key, yet another key that if you press, it will screw up your workflow and have some dumb pop-up thing come up. Another modifier key wouldn’t be so bad (or just turning the Windows key into a modifier key that doesn’t automatically pull up a dumb menu if accidentally pressed by itself). They really like beating people over the head with their useless features.
You can “disable” keys using an app like AutoIt or AutoHotKey to capture the input and just do nothing with it. Takes a 3 line script.
I’ve done this for years with my left Windows key, for playing games. I also add the left Alt-Tab when playing certain games, so I don’t accidentally tab out.
If you’re into custom keyboards you can also configure the entire PCB using things like QMK so any key can be anything you want. It is a significantly more expensive route the AHK though.
It kb has a built in function to disable the windows key. Fuck do I love it.
Oh great, another key to accidentally press when I’m in a game.
"It sounds like you're frustrated. Is there something specific you need help with? I'm here to assist you in any way I can."
“totally not Clippy”
Okay, next plan is to start buying non-windows keyboards.
Has power management for laptops gotten any better in the last couple of years on desktop Linux? I distro hopped for a year 3ish years ago but just didn’t like the fairly significant reduction in battery life.
There still are some problems, unfortunately.
Not a world of difference, but my laptop holds ~15% less when running Debian over Windows.
I’ve uses linux for the last 5 years switching to windows time to time. And consistently I have had less power consumption in linux than in windows.
I usually install linux mint on my laptop.
This tracks. I have recently gone back to running a Windows desktop machine for gaming, and now I have to actually shut it off because:
a) that fucking thing never stays asleep. Clean install with nothing other than Steam and a couple of games, sleep settings mean nothing. Just wakes up, stays awake forever.
b) Fortunately I have an enterprise license key so I don’t get as much random bullshit, but every update there is some new fucking thing I don’t want.
My machine is a desktop, but I can’t image how this works well on laptops.
Debian and Ubuntu works great on my ThinkPad. Getting better battery life in fact coz it sleeps properly compared to windows.
afaik yes, depends on distro and selected DE.
XFCE is solid, GNOME (ew lol) is solid, KDE last I checked was also solid
There is a slight pain with Fedora (and others) that use zswap/zram which disables hibernation. You can make a setup that swapsoff the memory properly so the laptop can hibernate instead of sleep, its just annoying-that its not a default feature or very easy to set up with a switch.
I’ve been getting fairly good battery life on arch and popOS on my laptop. Think it depends a bit on what laptop you’ve got as well. If I were to guess I’d say my current pop install gets ~10% less battery life than on windows, while I was probably even closer than that on arch after a bit of tinkering.
ooooh, a KRunner key!
I love having a keyboard where every key is programmable.
So a… keyboard?
All keyboard layouts can be customized in software but some keyboard hardware like QMK can be programmed in hardware, which makes it especially convenient for switching computers.
A Wooting keyboard
The fuck is a copilot key and why do I need it on my keyboard, hmm let’s see…
Copilot is their AI thing (which I think is just a wrapper for ChatGPT.) As for why you need it, fuck if I know. Love MS just adding another key that’s going to piss me off when I’m in a game.
So we will need another sticker to cover MS logos on every keyboard?
On mechanical keyboards its a standard keycap.
Nice so I can remap it to something useful
Well, if the picture is representative of an expected outcome, you don’t get a new key, you get to trade in the right ‘ctrl’ key for it.
Ugh so in that case I would need to remap to ctrl
Hope it tanks as all the major Microsoft “innovations “
why not remap existing keys? the Copilot key is probably replacing the right control key, which I use it for multiple keybindings that use control + a letter on the left side of the keyboard.
We already have a ton of modifier keys: Meta or Super, Alt, Shift and Control. And you can also remap Caps Lock to be another one if you don’t use it.
Personally, I like to remap Caps Lock to Super, for easier and quicker access to keybindings. I find the privileged position of Caps Lock in the keyboard absurd and rather useless.
I just got done learning how to turn off Copilot in group security policy, yay! Get away from me, even if you worked according to the spec in the marketing hype. I am the admin. I drive you out! :::holds up holy water and a crucifix:::
Oh no! That will fuck up my muscle memory!
Oh wait!
I don’t use Winblows! Ufa!
Wait, the keyboard layout standardization has been done by Microsoft?!
How about a key for faster choosing GNU+Linux in GRUB/rEFInd/libreboot? :)
Remove caps lock first I think
I want them to add raise and lower so you can use custom layers on your keyboard. Not that crap.
Emacs users rejoicing!
Yeah, just put it where the caps-lock key is. It’s the best position for “frequent” use.
/s obviously
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Are we finally going to get the Any key?