| The Office Keyboard
Okay, first of all, I'm going to answer the number one question
which I know is on everyone's mind right after seeing the keyboard
for the first time - What the heck is that thing on the left???
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The scroll wheel
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This, my friend, is a scroll wheel! That's right. They
actually put a scroll wheel on the keyboard. Now, why
would you need a scroll wheel on the keyboard when you've
already have one on your mouse?
Well, after typing several pages of text, you may
decide that you need to refer to something on another
page. No problem. You just have to lift a hand off the
keyboard and get to your mouse to use its scroll wheel. A
little troublesome, don't you think?
Now, with the scroll wheel on the keyboard, you don't
have to hunt for your mouse. You can quickly reach out and
flick the Office Keyboard's scroll wheel to similar
effect.
It might take some getting used to because this scroll
wheel is MUCH looser than the one on most mice.
That can be a good or bad thing depending on your
preference. You can adjust its sensitiveness in the
control panel as if you are adjusting it for your mouse. It's just a hunch but I think
you will need to install the Intellipoint software first.
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Above the wheel are the Back and Forward
buttons that work like Explorer's Back and Forward
buttons. I can't understand why they would put those
buttons on the
keyboard but I guess they are just putting two of the most
commonly used commands within easy reach.
Right below the scroll wheel are three buttons which correspond to
the most frequently used
commands of CUT, COPY and PASTE. Now, why
add those
buttons when you can easily use the shortcut keys of
Ctrl+C,
Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V ? Well, that's because not everyone knows about
them. In fact, many people just use the mouse for their cut and
paste jobs which is really quite tedious. These buttons will make it easier for
Office Keyboard users to work
faster.
The rocker button below the Cut, Copy and Paste buttons is
the hardware analog of the ALT-Tab shortcut used to switch between
applications. Once again, this is meant to help people who don't know the
shortcut keys. But even I feel that this method is much
better than using the ALT-Tab combination because
it brings up each window instead of forcing you
to navigate through a line of icons.
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