Success with computer input devices

[mtbc]

I had mentioned how my work Mac, plugged in at home, was applying the wrong keymap for my external keyboard and imposing some godawful acceleration on my scroll-wheel. Now I have adequate solutions for both:

• I installed an open-source utility named DiscreteScroll, which fixes macOS's unnecessary scroll wheel acceleration, making the scroll-wheel behave rather more manageably.


• It turns out that Apple's idea of a UK-layout keyboard is not the typical one, it's kind of halfway to a US one. As the Mac doesn't understand the typical UK layout, I realized that I can just buy a US-layout keyboard, which I am used to anyway. Having despaired of making sense of the differences among the dazzling range of Keychron keyboards, I indulged in a nice, loud Unicomp.

In another keyboard victory, a couple of my UK keyboards had dodgy keys. I can be slow to realize things but, eventually, I had the useful idea of transplanting a keycap (using my pry an old Kindle open at the seams levers) to make one fully able keyboard from the two problem ones.

Admittedly, although working with Mac OS X instead of GNU/Linux usually slows me down some, for my day job I am finding the Mac not to be much of a hindrance.

Comments

[shimmerwine]

I am absolutely a 'turn it on, get on the internet' person, so I'm always in awe of anyone who understands computers and their accoutrements enough to do things like this. :)

[mtbc]

Well, different people know about different things. (-: It's probably mostly just a reflection of hobby and profession for much of my life, yet there are many others (including among my friends here) who know plenty more than I about wrangling modern technology. It's not impossible that I'd have ultimately been happier focusing effort elsewhere. A lot of things are rather less excitingly mysterious once you know a bit about what's under the hood.

[thewayne]

Congrats on kludging a working keyboard together! It's always a bit of a pain having to reprogram accelerations and sensitivities. I'm glad I don't have to deal with multilingual keyboard issues, but that could be coming - no plans at this time, though.

I just bought a Logitech keyboard/mouse combo, and the it's really annoying. The mouse has like half a mm slop in its battery cover, and whenever I pick it up to move it to do some extreme mouse movement it slaps against the housing. And naturally all the other Logitech mice that I have the battery covers are different designs. I guess I'm going to have to see about returning it for a replacement and hope for better.

[mtbc]

That does sound annoying. I am amused to recall the joy when Apple moved the mouse charging port to the underside.

Main fun with multilingual keyboards is when people can't get their password correct because they're mistaken about the current mapping but can't see what they're typing.