Bugger

My wireless keyboard decided it had run out of power this morning, much to my annoyance. I run it on rechargeable batteries and there weren't any charged, or any ordinary batteries going spare. No matter, I could cope with using the laptop keyboard for a little while, and the charger is meant to be able to fully restore the batteries in about an hour.

Come lunchtime, the little red 'charging' light had gone out, so I put the newly powerful batteries back in the keyboard, poked the relevant connect buttons and started typing.

The first sentence, which should have been something along the lines of 'Melyn sat in the undergrowth, watching the small clearing as the light fell' came out as 'Mst howth l'. When I tried backspacing to delete the gibberish, nothing happened.

Bugger.

I spent most of the afternoon nicking batteries from the myriad electrical devices dotted around the house and trying to get the keyboard to work. Nothing. If I hammer the letter 'K' seven times it might appear once, but then again it might not. Ideal for finger exercises, but not much use for bashing out my daily target.

So back to the laptop keyboard. This is all right, after a fashion. The keys are in the same place as on the wireless one, but the typing position isn't as comfortable. My back will ache for a few days. Most problematic is the over-sensitive touch pad. Every time I brush it with the side of my hand, the cursor leaps back to wherever the mouse was last pointed and the text appears there. When I'm flying over the keys, in the grip of inspiration, that can get really annoying.

There is a way to turn the touchpad off, which would be ideal since the wireless mouse is still working fine. But I can't remember how to do it, and having wasted an afternoon trying to get the keyboard to work, I'm loath to waste an evening trying to figure out how to kill the touchpad.

Tomorrow I'll buy some fresh batteries, just in case my rechargeable ones have given their all and can give no more. Otherwise it's new keyboard time.

This one's only two years old. Bloody cheap Microsoft bollocks.

Comments

Stuart MacBride said…
Well, I’ve got a Microsoft Natural one – all bendy and split and bumpy – and it’s USB, so no battery-running-down bollocks for me! That’s what happens when you go playing with things without wires.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s nearly 03:00 and I need to shout for my bloody cat again… Who’d be a father?
Sandra Ruttan said…
I regretted not buying a cordless keyboard, but you've made me feel better. Thanks.
JamesO said…
It could be worse, Trace. At least I've got the laptop keyboard, even if it takes a little getting used to after my curvy 'natural' one.

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