Sennadar Forums

It finally died.

Good thing I had another one waiting for this auspicious moment.

Only problem is, it's one of those new-fangled fancy backlit keyboards, and I'm having a beast of time figuring out how to turn off the lights. Outside of that, I like it. I'd gotten so used to "must HULK SMASH A and E keys to make them work!" I'm surprised my left pinky and middle finger aren't three times thicker than the others.

Many Letters Typed, Many words concocted, many plots revealed, many stories told. To that Good Night Fair Keyboard, I knew thee well, thy doubled E, and missing A, the torrent of Fantasies translated by your black letters from the mind of Fel to the electronic page to be devoured by eager fans. Your labors remembered, to that Good Breaker in the far east, Good night Fair Keyboard, Good night

F as thy Master Requested

Fel wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 5:50 pm Only problem is, it's one of those new-fangled fancy backlit keyboards, and I'm having a beast of time figuring out how to turn off the lights.

You're an engineer, open it up and disable them

Does this mean you're now using an external keyboard for your little laptop that you write on?

Nah, this is my desktop. I probably wore it out playing Minecraft.

Though...an external keyboard wouldn't be a bad idea for my laptop. I'd have to get a corded one, that laptop was built before Bluetooth and its wifi is burned out.

EDIT: the reason for this is that my laptop has developed this weird bug where the keyboard stops working...or more to the point, the computer stops recognizing it. It's been happening more and more often lately.

Guess an 11 year old laptop is destined to develop some..."character."

f

r..d..v..g..t..

Dang fat fingers.

F is for find, as in find yourself an IBM Model M keyboard.

Unicomp makes them now, available with USB so you can use it with almost any PC laptop or desktop.

They do make more noise than cheap modern keyboards.
The only lights are the lock indicators.
With a little care they last decades.

Fel wrote:

> Though...an external keyboard wouldn't be a bad idea for my laptop. I'd
> have to get a corded one, that laptop was built before Bluetooth and its
> wifi is burned out.

Nah, you don't have to get a corded one. You can still get a wireless keyboard if you want. Just search Amazon or something for Bluetooth dongles. They plug right into a USB port, and allow any laptop Bluetooth capability. I know wireless mice often come with a non-bluetooth dongle of their own, but since I have never gone for a wireless keyboard I don't know about them.

I suggest a logitech wireless keyboard. They use that tiny usb receiver. no bluetooth necessary. you can also connect multiple peripherals to it. I have one receiver for my keyboard, mouse and trackball.

Also to disable the RGB on the keyboard, check the manufacturer's website. Many times they have control software available to shut the lights off or change how they behave and such.

Fel wrote: ↑Wed Jul 07, 2021 3:58 pmThough...an external keyboard wouldn't be a bad idea for my laptop. I'd have to get a corded one, that laptop was built before Bluetooth and its wifi is burned out.

I doubt it predates bluetooth as the first bluetooth mice and keyboards were released in 2000, although it probably predates bluetooth integration with wifi cards being common.

It is still possible you might manage to find a replacement for that wifi card, and possibly get one with bluetooth. It's just a question of what format the connection was for the wifi card.

I've been thinking about upgrading the my laptop's 7 year old wifi card("wave 0" 802.11ac as it is sometimes called now) to one that is "wifi 6" (802.11ax) enabled just for kicks, I could do so for about $30 through Amazon, just have to be willing to do the install myself. I've already been inside the case to replace the HDD with a SSD, and at least for me, the wifi card is just as easy to get to as the hard drive.

In reality, I don't WANT wifi on my writing laptop.

Why? It still runs Windows XP, and it not having wifi means it doesn't try to update. I keep all my work backed up on two flash drives, so I just use flash drives to copy stuff off the laptop to transfer to the desktop.

The laptop's BIOS starts at 2008, so I'm thinking that was when it was made. I'm not sure exactly when I bought it, because it wasn't originally mine. I bought it for my mother, but she had too much trouble with the small keyboard, so I bought her a larger laptop and took the EEE for myself.

I know I should upgrade my writing laptop, but the truth is, I'm so comfortable with, and familiar with, the old old OLD version of MS Word installed on it that I don't want to use something else. And I REALLY don't want to get the new Word, because they went to a subscription-based platform where I have to pay them every year just to use my own damn software.

I'll use my EEE until it literally falls apart.

just a note, office xp still works on windows 10. I'm not a big fan of office 365 either. I have to use it for work and I get lost in all the things. Sometimes simple is better. Function over form and all that.

Sadly, the version of Word I have will NOT run on 10. I've tried installing it.

if you do need to upgrade, you can try using LibreOffice, it's 100 percent free and as far as I can tell does pretty much anything Word can do.