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#79510 by Nick Pyner
Wed Mar 24, 2021 8:39 pm
Yesterday, my beloved Dell 430 finally died, so I immediately stepped out and bought an Asus E203N. It is fine, and really all I need, but I was not impressed when I started using DataCad.

This laptop does not have a dedicated HOME key.

Only two programmes will get serious use on this laptop, DataCad and Excel, they are the only programmes I can think of where I use the HOME key, and it is important on both. I DID check the keyboard first. It is slightly smaller than the Dell, but I thought I could live with it, and I probably can. It never occurred to me to check for keys gone AWOL.

I only this morning found that the left arrow key masquerades as the home key, but that requires SHIFT to go with it. I have also just found that I can do the same thing with the 7 key on my full-size off-board numeric keypad. Needless to say, I never needed to do that with the Dell - any Dell.

I'm rather pleased with the Asus, I don't think the above is enough for me to take it back, but I'm a little bit pissed off nonetheless, and I submit this is something to bear in mind during the decision-making process.

And who the hell uses the pause/break key anyway??
#79855 by dhs
Thu Jul 01, 2021 6:03 pm
Saw Nick's post just a few weeks after I had also bought a new Asus. Specs for the money were very good, and one reason for buying the model I did was that it had 2 drive bays (one populated with SSD, and the other one where I was able to mount HDD from my old laptop which gave me extra capacity and made transferring data from my old machine very easy).

Like Nick, I have found the lack of dedicated Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys somewhat inconvenient (and may have made a different purchase decision if I had realised beforehand). In my case I am not really a DataCAD power user and found the lack of the PgUp/PgDn keys more inconvenient than Home/End in DataCAD (as I often find myself zooming in and out when testing things in DataCAD). I have discovered however that I can use 2 finger gestures on the touchpad to zoom in/out (I assume that has been there for yonks, but I never had the need to look for it previously ... it works the opposite way to I expected but I am getting used to it).

Unlike Nick I use other programs more than DataCAD, and am finding the lack of dedicated Home/End keys really inconvenient with code editors and the like.

I have also found the touchpad on my new Asus to be a bit 'sloppy'. In particular the left/right buttons are clicked by tapping the bottom left/right area of the touchpad (rather than having separately defined buttons), and I am often finding that I have difficulty left/right clicking (my previous HP laptop had separate buttons, but other previous laptops have had the same arrangement as my current Asus and I don't remember ever having similar problems with those).

Just goes to show that I should have looked at more than just the specs before I made the purchase (bought it online without ever actually seeing or touching one - I would have looked at the keyboard layout if my purchase was after Nick's post, but would really have needed to spend a little time with one to be aware of the touchpad issues).

p.s. Nick ... I DO use the pause/break keys from time to time (but obviously not often enough to have missed them on the new laptop until I looked at it after re-reading your post this morning!)

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