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I certainly understand the frustration that can come from the inappropriate use of the caps lock, but disabling the caps lock key is a little like taking away a NASCAR driver's ability to make right turns. Sure, the driver doesn't need to make right turns very often, but can you image the predicaments that could occur in the pit area if drivers no longer had the ability to turn right. Personally, I frequently use the caps lock; and not simply to approximate Austin Powers telling us how he has, "LOST THE ABILITY TO CONTROL THE VOLUMN..." of his voice. For instance, when I am writing SQL statements, or even typing the word SQL or MySQL, it is fairly common for me to use the caps lock key. While MySQL does not require that reserved words be in caps, I generally like to do so out of convention and for debugging purposes. For instance SELECT * FROM somedb WHERE id = 42; is slightly more readable than select * from somedb where id = 42; This is a fairly simplistic example, but image a more complex SQL statement and attempting to hold the shift key for every letter of a reserved word that you intend to capitalize. I find that to be a bit awkward. --- Chris Howie Web Developer Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) Michigan State University Wells Hall, Suite B-135 619 Red Cedar Road East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 Direct Phone: (517) 884-0794 On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 5:16 PM, David McFarlane <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Rich, > > This topic has come up in another context, see threads at > https://groups.google.com/d/**topic/e-prime/b_dtTXuVdfg<https://groups.google.com/d/topic/e-prime/b_dtTXuVdfg>and > https://groups.google.com/d/**topic/e-prime/dlyJfCHnBf0<https://groups.google.com/d/topic/e-prime/dlyJfCHnBf0>. > > (Spoiler alert: I recommended simply yanking out the offending keys, and > covering with epoxy if need be.) > > -- dkm > > > > At 2/6/2013 05:08 PM Wednesday, Richard Wiggins wrote: > >> For many years I have found the Caps Lock key to most evil key on my >> computer. There is no reason why this key should appear on a modern >> computer. In modern times this key is useless. We simply do not type in all >> caps, for decades we do not. I would say it is useless since the 1980s, >> maybe the 1970s. We live in 2013, the 21st century, with a key that gets >> in the way every day, that not only serves no purpose, but in fact gets in >> the way. >> >> There is a registry hack that disables this Caps Lock key on Windows, or >> re-maps it. How do you inform your users how to disable Caps Lock? Why do >> Windows PCs even have the Caps Lock key? >> >> Do you do anything to disable this key for fleet PCs that you deploy? Do >> you advise end users how to disable the Caps Lock key, an artifact of the >> 1950s? >> >> What specific advice do you give your users? >> >> How have you contacted Microsoft and PC manufacturers with advice and >> concern? >> >> /rich >> >