Keyboard Ffffaults

I finally did it. After years of dedication to the desktop PC, I finally bought a laptop. I did my research, looked at my limited budget as a graduate student, and settled on a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge. I thought, after all, that ThinkPads were revered as the gold standard of laptop construction back in the day. After all, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and Fortune 500 companies all issue their people ThinkPads. There are stories of ThinkPads being melted, frozen, or drowned and still booting later. So how bad could they be?

Answer: very, very bad.

Why?

My keyboard doesn't work. Or, to phrase that a little differently, it works too well. Apparently, my keyboard feels that whenever I type the letter F, I actually want two, or three, or even four of the things. After all, reaching to center and hitting F can be a laborious task - so why not reward my hard finger work with giving me several of them at a time? My answer is that I don't need them, and it takes a lot more work to hit backspace three or four times every few words just to get a sentence out.

And here's the thing. It's an $800 laptop. Eight hundred dollars. There are certain features on a laptop that need to work, regardless of the price. I would think, short of the monitor failing altogether or the laptop electrocuting you every time you log on, the keyboard functioning properly is kind of important. After all, you usually use one of these things to do work on - and work requires typing - and typing requires a keyboard that works. Novel concept, I know.

So after jumping through Lenovo's litany of hoops - and this just in, Lenovo really, really, really doesn't want you to actually bother them about the product they sold you once they sold it to you - I settled for sending it in for repairs. Of course my hard disk is going to get wiped before it heads out my door - I don't want some stranger looking at my research, my family photographs, and rifling through my music collection. To be honest, I really just wanted to return it and get my money back. But to do so, I had to return it within 21 days of the laptop shipping and of course, we were on day 22 at the time. And no, the Stalinist Chinese customer support folks didn't want to play ball.

So the laptop goes off for repairs in a few days - so I can finally type the word of instead of off or offf or offfff every time I turn around. And if you don't think that a glitchy keyboard won't screw up your typing speed, just try hitting backspace every third or fourth keystroke. It will ruin your mojo in a hurry.

Conclusion of the day: I should  have gotten a Mac.