this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
64 points (81.4% liked)

Technology

58303 readers
11 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994::Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.

all 43 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 92 points 10 months ago (6 children)

No, fuck you. It's hard enough to find a keyboard with Ctrl and Alt in the positions I prefer these days. I don't need any of the current keys smaller to make room for another one, the only times I hit that stupid key between them is quickly followed by cursing. I remove the windows key from my gaming keyboards because I don't need it, FN is also a pain, especially when there's no fn lock toggle. Why don't we just use that as an alternate key? Microsoft go fuck yourself.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 10 months ago

Plus, fuck them for putting another Microsoft logo on keyboards.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Um... that's your example of a "wild" keyboard? I would've gone with a "Steno" keyboard. Which is inspired by the custom keyboards used in court houses to write transcripts. Typing on them is crazy fast too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Holy shit, watching that video was excruciating

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Or just https://artsey.io ('cause why use 2 hands when you can use one)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Holy forking shirtballs, the longer I look at that the worse it gets

As a PowerShell scripter, having the backtick and pipe keys moved with the escape and delete in their places would just drive me batty

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is this one supposed to be worse? 'Cause rn it's marginally better (split spacebar => ~3 keys for each thumb instead of 2.5).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Personally, I find layers more convenient. Like numbers on qwerty..., shift+numbers on asdf..., and all that stuff

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I love layers too, caps lock is my escape key/modifier key now and im happy.

Also, do you like to peck and type your numbers using "Fn", "Fn1", "Pn", the illusive green modifier or all of them at once for capital numbers /s

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Looks like my next keyboard is going to be a mechanical one. I don't want a "copilot" key that I won't use!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Build your own?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

copilotremapper.exe

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I don't want that, plus in the article they say it's only to open copilot search. Which you can already do with windows+c. And who asked for copilot search? Not to be mean but the basic window search somehow never works right for me and always bring me on the Edge browser instead of opening my files. So if they could fix that instead of bringing AI to still not give me what I want other than a statisticaly correct sentence that would be nice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I highly recommend PowerToys Run (something like Mac's Spotlight) with Everything plugin (better search).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Add the f25 key for "fuck Microsoft" x25

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Put some dang standard labels on the function keys.

F1 = Help

F2 = Rename

F3 = Search

F4 = Close

F5 = Refresh

F6-F10 = Decorative

F11 = Full screen

F12 = Goto definition

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I've never intentionally used F1 key to open help before

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Annoying when you accidentally hit it instead of ESC in certain Windows programs, loading Microsoft's windows help website in your browser without your consent.

On Linux it usually does nothing, as it should.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Well, technically with your consent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Even worse when it does it in Edge

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Doesnt it in gnome gtk and KDE open the "about" page with a help button somewhere on it?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

I actually have, in some older software F1 was basically an included digital copy of the manual and was great to have to find an obscure setting or feature.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That's why I remapped it to toggle my notes app

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

F6 goes to the address bar in (many? most?) web browsers

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I always use Ctrl+L if not Ctrl+T to open a new tab.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

And F7 triggers caret browsing

[–] DrDeadCrash 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

F7 for spell check (shift F7 for thesaurus)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

F8 is for "execute selected code"

Then again, F5 is for "run current script" or "compile and run program"...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

I will not buy any computer with that. The windows icon is one thing but that is over the fucking line.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’m already not using 30% of my keyboard’s keys so it’d only be one more😅

Anyway, I don’t plan on using anything windows related for the rest of my life except in a VM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It will replace the useless Menu key.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Of thats correct, will it take the key ID? Will the menu key just be repurposed

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It will be just repurposed I think.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Thats probably the best option, mabe even just barely enough to call this a not so big deal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard.

If nothing else, this new key is a sign of how much Microsoft wants people to use Copilot and its other generative AI products.

Plenty of past company initiatives—Bing, Edge, Cortana, and the Microsoft Store, to name a few—never managed to become baked into the hardware like this.

If Copilot fizzles or is deemphasized the way Cortana was, the Copilot key could become a way to quickly date a Windows PC from the mid-2020s, the way that changes to the Windows logo date keyboards from earlier eras.

Chipmakers like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are all building neural processing units (NPUs) into their latest silicon, and we'll likely see more updates for Windows apps and features that can take advantage of this new on-device processing capability.

Microsoft says the Copilot key will debut in some PCs that will be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show this month.


The original article contains 543 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!