Thinkpad laptops thankfully have a BIOS option to revert the behaviour to normal, where F1-F12 perform their nominal functions. I'd probably pay an extra €50 for a laptop that didn't come with a stupid Fn button at all. Might want to throw some more money at a few more keyboard modifications: my bottom row is Fn CTRL Win Alt Space AltGr PrtSc Ctrl; that PrtSc button clearly has no business being there. Arrows & PgUp/PgDown are too small. Backspace is too short. Etc.
Thinkpad laptops thankfully have the option to switch Fn and Ctrl Key in the bios, because that Fn in the bottem left is reserved by my muscle memory to ctrl and I won't change that.
The Thinkpad I have is too old to have the BIOS feature to swap Fn and Ctrl. It has a Core 2 duo.
They switched the Ctrl/Fn position a year or two ago so people like you would stop complaining. Of course this means that instead you have anybody who's used a thinkpad in the last 30 years complaining about the switch. It's a little better now because they made the keys the same size, so after you switch them in the BIOS you can physically switch the keycaps around.
Every keyboard I used so far - and those were many, many, many - have the ctrl in the bottom left.
Lenovo is the only weird excemption I experienced.
So I believe people like me are the vast majority and you should maybe rather blame them, for introducing this weirdness in the first place.
> Lenovo is the only weird excemption I experienced.
Apple has put the Fn key to the left of Ctrl since they added Fn to their laptops in 1998.
Lenovo is the “weird exception” because thinkpads have always had the Fn key on the bottom left. Just like they still keep the track point.
I would presume most people buying a thinkpad don’t want to buy “the vast majority” of laptops.
> thinkpads have always had the Fn key on the bottom left
It’s good that after 30 years they’ve realised their error and have finally fixed it. On Windows and Linux, Ctrl is the most-used-modifier-key and bottom-left is the most-easy-to-find-key-position. Putting the most used key in the easiest-to-find position shouldn’t be a hard decision to make.
Macbook M3 ... same. Not such a weird exception these days.
No. I bought it especially, because it has a replacable battery, which is not a factor for the vast majority I believe.
If that key would not have been switchable I would have returned it, though ..
But seriously. Who would want that excemption, unless they have already been trained in the non standard way?
Ctrl key I have to use very often. Bottom left is easy to find, even blind.
But the fn Key? Only needed at very rare occasions, so why waste the special ergonomic place for it?
Yes, normally a BIOS setting on laptops I think. Before changing it I was hitting sleep constantly since they'd put it on F1, jammed up next to escape.
My Dell has it too, thank goodness.
You need Fn anyway because even 16" now come without a navigation block and even if you have it (asus tm420 though they ditched that too) you have no way to make PrtScr, Break, ScrollLock.
The real atrocity is placing it on the left side when 90% of the most used combos are on the right eg Fn+arrows for paging and home/end.
It could be way better if Fn was on the place of ContextMenu - Thinkpad already used it for the stupid PrtScr and now even more stupid Copilot key.
I wouldn't buy a laptop that requires the use of Fn for any key I commonly use. I don't particularly care about PrtScr, Break or ScrollLock. Can't remember the last time I used either of those. But Home/End/PgUp/PgDown are requirements.
> I don't particularly care about PrtScr, Break or ScrollLock
Glad for you. But the moment you need to hit Ctrl+Break...