The ABCkeyboardTM – Instructions
To install, simply power your computer down, unplug the old Qwerty keyboard, plug the new ABCkeyboard in, and power up. That’s it! (If you don’t power down, your computer may get confused.)
The keys are laid out in A to Z order instead of QWERTY layout. Just remember that the letters A-J are in the top row, K-S in middle row, and T-Z in the bottom row. Then you’ll soon find you don’t even have to look at the keyboard to type.
But we have made other alterations to the keyboard to make it easier.
Many beginners (and some with 20 years experience!) touch the “Caps Lock” key by mistake. When they next look at the screen, they’ve typed half a sentance in CAPITALS when they didn’t mean to. Deleting and retyping is really annoying!
So we’ve changed the Caps lock key to be Shift Caps Lock – you need to press the shift key at the same time to lock CAPITALS on. So you aren’t likely to make a mistake!
Similarly, if editing an existing paragraph, you can press the “Insert” key by mistake and overwrite your earlier work without meaning to. Not on the ABCkeyboard!TM Again, you press both “Shift” and “Insert” keys together to switch to overwrite, and the same to switch back.
Many experienced users don’t use the numeric keypad because the Num Lock key switches the numeric pad to edit mode – Page up, arrow keys etc. You may think you’re keying figures, when actually the screen is going mad. This is really silly – those keys are all duplicated in the area to the left of the keypad. So on the ABCkeyboardTM
, the numeric keypad is always on, we’ve made the Num Lock key the Pound Sterling currency key (£) and added the Euro currency symbol €.
The key next to the right hand Control (Ctrl) key is the equivalent of right cliick on the mouse.
The lock key on F11 locks the keyboard so it can’t be used. Unlock it by pressing the Fn key first then the F11 together.
Its as easy as ABC!
Use in the UK.British keyboards use a slightly different layout than American ones, principally so they can get a Pound sign (£). A different keyboard layout necessitates a different software driver, so British computers have the British driver installed to make this pound sign work.
The ABCkeyboard doesn’t need a special driver to get the pound sign; the Pound and Euro keys are on the keyboard from the beginning.
With your ABCkeyboard connected you will recognise whether your computer is running a British driver by the following symptoms:The tilde ~ (top left) prints on the screen as an “L” turned through 180 degrees.The @ sign prints as quotes “, ie inverted commas.The hash sign prints as a Pound sign £.The quotes sign next to the enter key prints as an @ sign.There is no need to do anything about this as long as you don’t need the tilde or hash sign and remember quotes and @ are swapped. (You can even pull these two keys out and swap them!)However if you want to fix this and install the driver, proceed as follows (Instructions for Windows 98):Close all other programs (you may be able to avoid a reboot)You may need the Windows 98 CDROM1. Click start2. Click settings, 3. Click Control Panel4. Click on the Keyboard5. Click the Language tab at the top.6. If “English (United States)” isn’t there in the list, click Add.7. Click the down arrow and go to English (United States), and click on it8. Click on it again to highlight it and click “Set As default”9. Click Apply and OK to finish.If it asks for the CDROM (ie the driver isn’t already on your hard disk), put it in when requested.Call 001 800 567 1602 after 1pm if required, or see http://www.abckeyboard.com