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.