I agree that the PC Jr. keyboard is the worst of all time, but I don't think the C-64 belongs on the list at all.
One glance at it reveals three major flaws. It was visually confusing, with too many symbols printed on each key.
The extra symbols were graphics characters for BASIC, and were hardly ever used unless one was programming their own games. They weren't on the key faces, and a touch typist wouldn't care anyway.
The computer's anti-ergonomic 2-inch height made it extremely hard on the wrists of untrained typists.
Not much could be done about it, since the keyboard was the whole computer. I never found it a problem.
And the keyboard's layout leaves much to be desired, with numerous examples of poor key placement. For example, the Home/Clear key sat directly to the left of Delete (Backspace), resulting in users' making repeated accidental hits and sending the cursor back up to the top of the screen.
Apparently "numerous" = 1.
In addition, the layout was peppered with an unusually large number of nonstandard keys such as Run/Stop and Restore.
I may have been wrong. Apparently "numerous" may also = 2. This same could also be said about current Mac keyboards.
Luckily, most C64 owners remained oblivious to these problems: More often than not, they used the C64 for playing games with joysticks, saving the heavy computing work for dad's IBM PC.
I wrote a lab manual on my 64. The snide jerk seems to miss the point that in 1982 there really wasn't such a thing as a standard computer keyboard layout yet. And in it's favor, it had the function keys to one side, which I've always preferred.
For my part, I despise the newer keyboards coming out from Microsoft and Logitech where they've rearranged the keys above the cursor keys from horizontal layout to vertical.
If most users are oblivious to the problems, how bad can they be?
I didn't see my cherished ZX Spectrum on their, although Sinclair got props.
I dunno--some keyboards were awful (having the letter on the key is a good idea), but some were just clunky and old.
DX, do you have a link to one of those re-orged keyboards? Have they made the function keys into two columns instead of the one row?
Oh, I see what you mean. No idea where my brain was when I asked about the function keys.
I don't use those keys that often so I don't mind. No, I take that back. Need to be able to get to page down and page up quickly and accurately.
Yeah, the C-64 was the only one where I didn't see why they included it.
I need to get my C-64 fixed. Or maybe an emulator. You have to have a Commodore floppy drive to read a Commodore floppy, right?
My husband and I used to hook up machines with a serial cable so we could game together.
I never did this, but I remember using some program (something with a K?) that basically emulated serial connections across the internet, so old versions of game that only had serial multiplayer could play against each other. Like Warcraft II (before the re-released it with BattleNet). I think that the Microsoft equivalent of Yahoo! Games also had a room for this sort of connection, once upon a time. I played Jedi Knight in those rooms.
Normally, to debug Javascript in IE you set "Display a notification about every script error" to True and "Disable Script Debugging" to False. Anyone know why sometimes script debugging may not be an option even with these settings?
Cellphone question. Yesterday I finally called Cingular/AT&T to complain that my reception has been getting worse over the past year. The guy on the phone was very nice (and I to him). And he supposedly looked at a map of my location, and the location of cell towers. He said I was in the middle of about 10 towers. He explained that the probable reason of poor reception was that as I leave a tower (i.e. driving into work), that tower will hold communication with my cell as long as possible, even tho I am now closer to another tower. Such that, my low/no signal is because the phone is trying to talk to tower A. But if I turn off my phone for 15 seconds, and power back on, that it would seek the strongest signal and latch on to it.
Which sounds ok for a moment. But then, like... if your cell says "No Signal", wouldn't it actively LOOK for a new signal and latch on to tower B??
Just wondering if anyone knows better, or if the guy was real nice and LIED to me to get me off the phone.
omnis - I have heard that other people who had your problem got a new sim card and that things improved considerably for them.
I started noting the problem in/around March or so. I got a new iPhone in November (with new SIM card). And it hasn't improved.
