Page 1 of US PC keyboard (PS/2) - 70p

I`ve always used a US keyboard at home and work (yes, I`m in the UK and I`m British and work for a UK company!), but it`s quite difficult to find US layout keyboards. Ebuyer UK have got 4,000 (!) of them - at 70p each.

They look like very basic Cheetah PS/2 keyboards, but useful for spares if my main US keyboard goes kaput (I`ve ordered 3, which should arrive in the next week or so). There is postage to add, but not too much (1.50 pounds roughly if you go Super Saver), so I threw in a couple of USB optical mice and the whole lot came to only 11 pounds inc P&P.

BTW, my theory on this is that the US keyboards were wrongly sent to Ebuyer UK instead of Ebuyer US and the UK folks decided it was cheaper to dump them at a silly price via their UK site than ship them over the Atlantic :) And, yes, they should work on UK PCs without a problem (you`ll need to change your OS`s keyboard country setting of course if you`ve previously had a UK keyboard attached).

This item was edited on Monday, 25th April 2005, 23:08

Why would you want a US keyboard ? :¦ Uk one is only about £1.50 -£2.00 anyway ?


Mutter something about blumming Yanks then wanders off !!!! :p :D

Missing £ key can be an @rse....

Obviously the US layout won`t be suitable for the vast majority of UK people (yes, the missing pound - see how I spell it out :) - can be an issue), but there may be folks who use the US layout who read this forum (e.g. ex-pats, people working for US companies based in the UK and so on), so that`s why I posted up the bargain (and I`d say less than a pound for a keyboard *is* a bargain, even if it`s not got a pound key...).

Ok...I`ll ask before someone else does...

UK keyboards have a $ key as well as a £ key...so what do US keyboards have instead of the £ ??... :/

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"If I had time....and a hammer, I`d track down every bootleg copy and smash it........"
- George Lucas

My DVD collection

#

and instead of the #?

"Every time I learn something new it pushes some old stuff out of my brain!"

If you set your keyboard layout ot US in Control panel (guessing your a Windows user ) then you can find out what all the keys do :)

try doing a google search on it.
One example seems to suggest that US keyboards don`t have that funny key in the top left with the odd graphics symbols on which look suspiciously like a couple of the box drawing symbols and a speech mark. Therefore the speechmark turns up under the tilda sign instead of the hash sign.
This sticking to the familiar keyboard and resisting change attitude is what prevented the ergonomic keyboards with keys laid out for faster typing from catching on. Touch typists seem to be incapable from evolving from the qwerty (or in the french case azerty) layout.

> This sticking to the familiar keyboard and resisting change attitude is what prevented the ergonomic keyboards with keys laid out for faster typing from catching on.

Well, you might have a point if we were discussing the vastly different layouts of, say, a Dvorak vs. Qwerty keyboard, but in this case, it`s only a few punctuation/symbol keys that are in different positions (or missing altogether) and if I switched to a UK keyboard, my typing speed wouldn`t improve one bit (unless you count not having to type "pound" as a speed increase :) ). The UK Qwerty keyboard is just as unergomic as the US one I`m afraid.

BTW, on a different note, anyone noticed that Ebuyer use Citylink to deliver and they gave me a parcel tracking number which was actually originally assigned to someone else a couple of months ago ! Yep, Citylink are re-using their tracking numbers pretty quickly (and the original info is still there - in fact, my customer ref details aren`t there - the old ones are !).

Update: Citylink delivered today and everything works fine. The backspace key is arguably too small on the US keyboard (it`s the size of a normal key instead of being double-width), but the mouse my original posting mentioned is very good - lights up blue (and red) and is nice to use.

This item was edited on Friday, 29th April 2005, 16:42