For my birthday, my husband, parents, and grandmother all pitched in and gave me enough money to buy a refurbished MacBook. It was much needed, especially considering that I now use my laptop for most of the time I am awake and cram it full of the crazy copy I write all day.
But here’s the thing: it is better than my old iMac in every way except one. It has a slightly bigger screen, it goes faster, it holds more, it picks up our wireless internet consistently. But the keyboard is considerably bigger than my former keyboard. I heard that there were lots of complaints about the original iMac keyboard being too small, but it was perfect for my puny, stubby little hands.
The result of the keyboard size shift is concentrated in a problem with my left ring finger and its constant confusion of the “S” key and the “Z” key. It seems like it can’t quite reach to “Z” key when it needs to and that, as a result, it now often overcompensates and hits the “Z” instead of the “S”, as if that’s going to help matters.
The result is that I’m very often mixing up my Zs and Ss, especially near the end of words. More specifically, all of my copy has started sounding like a British Rapper. Here are two examples:
“…that allow educational policy students to realise the skillz needed in….”
“… analyse chartz and tables for further….”
Let’s hope I can correct this problem before I turn in something like this to a client. …home boyz.
7 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link
http://sarahaswell.com/2008/03/20/apparently-i-am-a-british-rapper/trackback/
March 20, 2008 at 12:38 pm
April
I transcribed a report for my home inspector boss a few years ago that contained fatal spelling error.
I had typed “ASS FLASHING” instead of “ADD FLASHING”.
Luckily, we caught it. But I was fired later for having too many Gin Blossoms dance parties while he was out of the office. That’s a long story.
March 20, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Tyrion
Wait, aren’t those actual lines from a Streets album?
March 20, 2008 at 11:44 pm
rebecca
iChat!!!
March 21, 2008 at 12:17 am
Kate
Two words: external keyboard.
It does make computer-ing on the couch slightly less convenient though!
March 21, 2008 at 11:32 am
Beth from Avenue Z
What’s wrong with too many Zs? I happen to be fond of them.
March 22, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Dzurlyndria
Maybe you just need to spend more time with it? I had a split ergodynamic keyboard once. It took me two weeks to get used to it. It came with a guidebook that gave strategies for adjusting to it. One of them was to keep the hands “floating” above the keyboard during the initial relearning process so the brain could more easily adjust, but they stressed a two-week learning curve. As you can guess, this was terribly counter-productive at first, but towards the end of the first week, the process began to pick up. I guess the theory is that your body and brain will figure out what position is most natural for your hands and gravitate there.
Of course, there is no accounting for the wisdom of knowing which battles to forfeit, because in this situation only you know best.
To that end, I recommend a wireless external keyboard. USB, if possible. I’d be surprised if Apple didn’t offer some proprietary hardware for the iMac along these lines. I do suggest getting something that won’t require a small receiver device dangling off the laptop in mid-air as you stand there, laptop 2 feet off the table, kicking yourself because you forgot the device was attached and picked the laptop up, pulling some stuff onto the floor in the process. Argh.
March 23, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Bernie Hayden
The MacBook is awesome, compared to the Dell I was using. I’ve been on the MackBook every day since Jan., and it has not crashed yet. Always picks up the wireless signal from the cable router. Only complaint: the “On” key sticks, just like on the iMac. Someday I am not going to be able to turn it on. So mostly I just put it to sleep. Bernie