Typos -- Blame HP, Not Just MT!

The Madville Times commits perhaps more than its share of typos. Scan the contents herein, and you'll find a fair number of words with missing letters. Speed is no excuse for sloppiness; typos and other errors still create a negative impression that good writers should strive mightily to avoid.

However, the Madville Times is relieved to discover that it can share the responsibility for sloppy composition with Hewlett-Packard, the manufacturers of the Madville Times' state of the art publishing equipment. Ever since purchasing the HP dv5000z notebook ten months ago, this writer has noticed strange keyboard glitches: sticky SHIFT and CTRL keys and an annoying tendency for the keyboard to drop letters.

For a long time, I ignored the problem. A quick tap of the SHIFT or CTRL keys would unstick them, and the dropped letters -- well, that could just be these fingers going too fast and lightly across the keys. But recently I've been hammering through blog entries when suddenly the CTRL key would stick. A sequence of otherwise innocuous letters, now with CTRL imposed on them, would send the browser careening and beeping through a series of special commands, trying to save, print, reload, and delete the contents of the browser window. (Thank goodness for Blogger's autosave!)

So I called HP tech support and was directed to the warm-voiced but cool-headed Paola (location still undisclosed). Monday she recommended a full power-down: shut down, pull the AC and battery, hold down the power button for 30 seconds to drain the capacitors. She called back Tuesday to see if that had worked. It hadn't. So she recommended checking the keyboard driver. We discovered that Device Manager doesn't list one. She checked her files and found HP doesn't have a driver for its own keyboard. She said she'd do some research and call back today. In the meantime, she recommended, check Microsoft.com for a keyboard driver.

I find dealing with Microsoft about as palatable as a full system restore (which is the other option Paola is trying to help me avoid). So I did some online research and found -- surprise! -- I'm not alone! An HP forum carries the complaints of numerous users over the past year describing the "dv5000 strange keyboard problem." Sticky SHIFT and CTRL, dropped keys -- it's an endemic HP problem. The prevailing opinion: HP just can't make good keyboards.

The Madville Times will continue to seek resolutions to this problem. The only hopeful tech fix appears to be a BIOS update. The only sure fix, though, is patient, painstaking proofreading... and double-triple-checking whenever I type anything about our public officials.

Disclaimer: Downloaders beware! The BIOS update appears to fix my problem, but the Madville Times takes no responsibility for any computer strangeness you may experience seeking the same remedy to your problems. If whacking keys and updating BIOS makes your computer start smoking, don't sue me (no money here, anyway) -- sue HP!