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!
Dude, you need a Dell!
ReplyDeleteDude, we have one. The hard drive self-destructed before its second birthday, and now it needs regular restarts. But it's still not as bad as my old Gateway (traitors to South Dakota! forever may they rot!), which required three factory trips in the first year.
ReplyDeleteMy best laptop ever: 1999 NEC Ready 120LT. Still boots up, has never lost data. Just noisy as heck (rather like its owner)!
Or an easy fix: just get an external keyboard if you are working at a desk. If you are out in your rock garden meditating and blogging, well, then you're just stuck.
ReplyDeleteAnd remember: only bad workers blame their tools.
Har-de-har, Kyle. Just what I've always wanted: a laptop that I can only use at my desk. Ommmmmm....
ReplyDeleteLaptops, I curse ye all to Heck.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, mobility just isn't worth it.
I replaced a keyboard for a desktop that had lasted years with a HP "multi-media" keyboard. In just a few weeks, most of the lettering (as in ASDF) have disappeared from the keys. One day the "d" key decided it needed twice as much pressure as all other keys.
ReplyDeleteTurning it upside down and shaking it solved that however. Got it for the programmable keys so I could know how to use it to simplify keyboard life for some less than proficient users. Neat enough for that however.
Thought about a wireless Logitech keyboard, but a lot of reviews indicate problems with capacitors building up a charge, etc. I guess if discount store gets it cheaper, I might buy it anyway.
I saw a news story about a fullsize keyboard that had a bracket on it to set up the portable like a monitor. USB connection. Altos version or some such might be useful for portable users, but listed for $99.
Good thing that some pretty primitive computer equipment is still perfectly suitable for polluting the information highway...even if some ISPs are demanding upgrades from W98SE.
Update: Four days ago, I installed the BIOS update linked in the original post. There was a frightening few minutes afterward when the keyboard was really acting wonky: upon typing certain letters, the cursor would back up one space, porudnicg txet lkie tihs. I was running an online virus scan at the time; once I shut that mess down and started over, that problem disappeared. In four days of blogging and other text generation, the standard HP keyboard problems of sticky SHIFT and CTRL and dropped characters has not appeared. I'm still waiting for some other gremlin to leap out of the machine, but so far, so good!
ReplyDeleteUpdate: Almost three weeks now, and the keybaord problem appears not to have returned. However, I have experienced a couple other strange glitches: my customized Start button reset itself to the Windows icon (grrr), and I've had some inexplicable issues with my Internet connection (wireless connection is on, excellent strength, but programs can't access Internet -- fix happens randomly after much jiggling of wires). I don't have my doctorate in info. sys. yet, so I have no idea if these new glitches are connected to the BIOS update. But, as always, downloaders beware!
ReplyDeleteUpdate: Three months later, no apparent trouble! My keys are still functioning fine. Every now and then I get a hit from someone Googling "HP dv5000 keyboard misses strokes fix" or some such combination, and they read the article and outclick on the BIOS update. No one has called back to complain, so the BIOS fix may indeed be the answer. (I wonder if HP tech support has realized this yet.)
ReplyDelete