[gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard

[Joel Deutsch]

Gerardo,

I forget whether or not I've already replied to this message, so if I have, 
please forgive the redundancy. Just want to say thanks for the moral 
support, and, as I told Lloyd, I'm putting in half an hour or an hour every 
day either just practicing on the laptop or doing basic chores like making 
special settings in Jaws, copying certain files from my destop by way of a 
thumb drive, and so forth. I can see I won't be sitting in my armchair and 
handily typing away on this thing tomorrow, exactly, but I think if I just 
persist as I've been doing, I'll be able to make some use of it in the near 
future. Meantime, I still have my desktop, no problems with that at all, so 
it's not as if I'm impaired in my daily computer usage during this learning 
period.

Again, thanm,thanks for moral support, and all the best to you in the new 
year.

Joel
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gerardo Corripio" <gera1027 at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard


Hi Joel and listers: I've used a laptop with its built-in keyboard since
December 2005. coming from having used a desktop since december of 98,
during the first few weeks it was kind of frustrating, even more having to
learn Jaws's laptop keyboard layout having the laptop no number pad, so Joel
be thankful that your laptop does have a number pad, or your frustratinos
would have been even greater! I use my laptop as my only machine and have
gotten used to the laptop keyboard keeping in mind the keys are a bit
smaller than the desktop keyboard, so have patience and if you ask me a few
months from now surely you'll tell us how you should have bought a laptop
sooner!
Gerardo
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joel Deutsch" <jdeutsch at dslextreme.com>
To: "GUI-Talk" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 2:14 PM
Subject: [gui-talk] Still hassling with my laptop keyboard


Hi listers,

Okay, please come clean. I know some of us are totally blind and some are
partial. I'm partial, myself, but I have no central vision thus can't read
at all with my eyes. Only with Jaws, recorded literature, and so forth. So
in dealing with this new machine of mine, which I'd hoped would be a handy
tool, I'm at a loss.

I thought I'd be able to get the hang of the keyboard with some effort. it's
an Acer with a number key pad so I don't have to learn the Jaws laptop key
commands.

but still there's no space between the keys and the sections of keys as I'm
accustomed to on a normal keyboard, and no matter how patiently I sit and
turn on Jaws Keyboard Help to explore and get the lay of the land, so to
speak, I just am finding it nearly impossible to operate the machine.

Please bear in mind that I'm a pretty damn good touch typist, plus a Jaws
user from way back with the current release. Ordinary stuff like that is not
impeding me. But try as I might, my fingers just can't figure out where keys
are, except in small, lucky instances and a few keys I happen to have taught
myself by now. I don't think this is gonna work.

I know I can get a USB keyboard to plug into this laptop, then set the
computer within earshot and sit back with only the keyboard on my lap. But
this ain't what I'd daydreamed about. I guess I didn't anticipate
realistically how tough this would be to do blind.

Please just tell the truth, guys. I think a number of you are using laptops,
at least as your secondary computers. How many of you actually use your
laptops (mine's an Acer PC, for what that matters) normally, and how many
use an auxiliary keyboard? Am I in a very low-skill class, sort of, if I
can't figure out how to type on something like this the way sighted people
do with their own laptops?

Ug. Bummed out. thanks for any helpful feedback.
and Happy New Year.

Joel


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