Thursday, November 24, 2011

Attn: Canadian Laptop Retailers and Supplying Manufacturers!!

With this blog post, I wish to extend the electronic equivalence of the "finger" to computer manufacturers and retail stores who carry only the bilingual keyboard (ISO) based laptops in Canada.

In 2006 I brought my last Toshiba laptop in Canada by a retail store (FutureShop). It was a solid, reliable machine which worked extremely well for running many statistical test models and was used in the completion of a Thesis with no problems what so ever. Naturally I would have liked to replace it with another Toshiba laptop. Alas, all Toshiba latops come with an insane bilingual (ISO) keyboard in Canada now.

In 2008, unknowingly I made the mistake of buying a poorly built Compaq laptop as a second laptop which had one of these bilingual keyboards. Eventually after it's warranty has ended, I replaced the bilingual (ISO) keyboard with a standard US (ANSI) keyboard to keep my sanity. After close to two years of use, I never got used to typing on that atrocious bilingual keyboard. This was when I started to realize the madness of having only this bilingual keyboard available in Canada for those of us who have used a standard keyboard for many a years and can type.

It took me all of 2010 and most of 2011 to find a suitable laptop to replace the the older Toshiba laptop. As a consumer who is purchasing a laptop approximately every two years I think I can effectively protest by not buying in local retail stores so long as they force this keyboard on me. I have had a very difficult time in Canada to find a decent laptop which match the specifications I need without a damn bilingual keyboard with this insane ISO keyboard layout.

I have just ordered a lenovo Thinkpad from lenovo.com with a keyboard of my choice!!! Thanks to the stupid decision of some ignorant fools, I have to do these transactions online even though I prefer to go to a store and have a look at the product I am about to buy in person. I wish I knew the proper authority responsible for making the decision to force this keyboard on all Canadians to give those gits a good piece of my mind. If lenovo.com is competent and the Thinkpad machine is reliable which they are reputed to be, I will be going back to lenovo.com when I am to replace my second laptop in the near future.

If I am ever to consider buying a laptop from any other manufacturer and retail store perhaps they should consider offering, at the very least a choice of keyboard to the customers instead of ramming this insane keyboards down our throats. Just my two cents on this matter.

3 comments:

derekkim said...

You can fix it: http://www.pressshift.ca . Let me know if you would like a sample or anything at admin@pressshift.ca

viduliya said...

@derekkim

I actually tried this with a piece of cardboard and tape before.. It works kind of okay although it looks ugly. But It still does not fix the problem with vertical the key.

viduliya said...

Currently we have two Lenovo thinkpad laptops with normal keyboards. They are great!