Information

[stonelion]

I recently bought my husband his own laptop. He uses it mainly for email and web research. It is a fairly simple, straightforward laptop. No bells, no whistles, pretty much what Staples had on sale. I have several computers in my home office but they are geared toward the kind of IT work I do. My own background is in computer science and my ‘day job’ consists of a lot of programming, systems analysis, report writing and other high-geek stuff that I won’t bore you with. Suffice it to say that the computers that I work on are not exactly user-friendly. In fact, I would characterize some of them as positively user-hostile. Hence the need for a simple laptop to perform straightforward tasks.


My husband had been using an older laptop of mine whose hard drive finally went to the big component roundup in the sky. I was lucky enough to creep in an electronic back door and salvage all of his email and document history before the thing gave up the ghost. I set up his new laptop with all of his internet history and his entire email configuration so he did not lose anything. Given the state of the old laptop, pulling this off was the IT equivalent of skating’s quad jump. I was justifiably proud of myself.



So why am I telling you all this? Simply because today, I wanted to look something up quickly so I sat down with my husband’s laptop. SOMEHOW I pressed just the right – or wrong as it happens – combination of keys which turned the entire display upside down. Not kidding. I also apparently got the keypad to work upside down and backwards. Seriously. So there I am, sitting in a chair in the family room staring open-mouthed at something I have a.) never seen before and b.) wasn’t even aware you could do.



OK. So question number one. How is this ever useful? I guess if you were weightless in space this might – and I emphasize might – come in handy. Other than that I have no clue. And since I have never been nor do I ever intend to work in outer space, any other use this might serve escapes me entirely. Maybe the manufacturers included this just to prove that they could. Again, no idea. It’s a really nice laptop and it was very reasonably priced. This clearly was not on my ‘must have’ feature list (is it on anyone's?) and is about as meaningful for me as those pens that can write upside down – also, by the way, designed for the apparent hoards of people reporting for work beyond the stratosphere.



So if we remove astronauts from the mix, I’m guessing the number of people salivating for this particular feature is right around, just guessing here – ZERO. HOWEVER, and judging from the research I did on the Internet, there is a considerably larger number trying to figure out how to DISABLE it. This I located in pretty short order. Fixing it required logging back into the computer upside down and left to right. Up is down, right is left: you get the picture. Then I simply had to press three keys together and –voila – back to planet earth.



So I spent a half hour learning a valuable lesson about how to fix something that makes no sense in the first place. Which, come to think of it, pretty neatly sums up my day job in a nutshell.

[teresar66]

ROFLMAO here!!!

[handerful]

YOu definitely live in an interesting world!


My 5 year old would probably find a use for that upside down function... lol

[CherryTat]

Sounds like something that happens to me!!! I SWEAR this laptop hates me! Even typing something simple is sometimes a chore. I'll be typing along, I have to watch the keys a fair bit, so I'll look up and my cursor is back in the middle of the sentence and everything is shagged up. Or the last sentence I wrote will be gone. Some days are worse than others. And again, I SWEAR it's the laptop and not me. I will purposely lift my hands up off it completely in case I hit keys that make it do something weird, and it still happens. Maybe his laptop just didn't like you? Or it was having a bad day? I'm convinced that's what's wrong with this one because it never happens to my hubby. Every now and again I end up making the font too tiny to read, how I don't know, and I have done some other weird things. But I think you are on your own with the upside down thing!

[stonelion]

Sounds like something that happens to me!!! I SWEAR this laptop hates me! Even typing something simple is sometimes a chore. I'll be typing along, I have to watch the keys a fair bit, so I'll look up and my cursor is back in the middle of the sentence and everything is shagged up. Or the last sentence I wrote will be gone. Some days are worse than others. And again, I SWEAR it's the laptop and not me. I will purposely lift my hands up off it completely in case I hit keys that make it do something weird, and it still happens. Maybe his laptop just didn't like you? Or it was having a bad day? I'm convinced that's what's wrong with this one because it never happens to my hubby. Every now and again I end up making the font too tiny to read, how I don't know, and I have done some other weird things. But I think you are on your own with the upside down thing!

Actually, if you have a touchapd, it IS the laptop. This is caused by static electricity when you accidentally brush your hand or a finger across the touchpad. The sure fire cure for this is to disable the touchpad altogether and hook up a mouse instead. Some days are worse than others because some days are drier and hence generate more static electricity than others. You can try making a weak solution of fabric softener and water and spraying around the area where you use your laptop.

[CherryTat]

Sounds like something that happens to me!!! I SWEAR this laptop hates me! Even typing something simple is sometimes a chore. I'll be typing along, I have to watch the keys a fair bit, so I'll look up and my cursor is back in the middle of the sentence and everything is shagged up. Or the last sentence I wrote will be gone. Some days are worse than others. And again, I SWEAR it's the laptop and not me. I will purposely lift my hands up off it completely in case I hit keys that make it do something weird, and it still happens. Maybe his laptop just didn't like you? Or it was having a bad day? I'm convinced that's what's wrong with this one because it never happens to my hubby. Every now and again I end up making the font too tiny to read, how I don't know, and I have done some other weird things. But I think you are on your own with the upside down thing!

Actually, if you have a touchapd, it IS the laptop. This is caused by static electricity when you accidentally brush your hand or a finger across the touchpad. The sure fire cure for this is to disable the touchpad altogether and hook up a mouse instead. Some days are worse than others because some days are drier and hence generate more static electricity than others. You can try making a weak solution of fabric softener and water and spraying around the area where you use your laptop.

Thank you!!!!! I knew it wasn't me! I said to my hubby that maybe it is some kind of reaction just to me. Ohhh, I love my touchpad though. Why would it not happen to hubby though? Thanks for the info!!!!

[stonelion]

Let me hazard a guess here - you touch-type and he uses the two finger hunt and peck method? People who touch-type position their hands over the keyboard thus increasing the chances that they will accidentally brush against the keypad. Two finger typists do not.

[AnnOminous]

Hey, I like the pens that can write upside down. Comes in real handy. But then I used to be a rocket scientist.....

[Ayla]

LOL!!!! When I was first divorced, I worked nights, and slept during teh day. The kids were too young to stay by themselves at night, so I had a babysitter come in at night. I couldn't afford one during the day too, so I just slept on the couch while I set up toys for Callum - he was about 3. Luckily, he's not the kind of kid who generally got into much trouble. I would leave the tv on to an acceptable channel, and open a couple of computer websites where there was appropriate play. One day I woke up to find the peanut butter jar in the middle of the kitchen floor with a spoon sticking out of it. Can't blame him for that one....I love peanut butter from a spoon too! Another day he opened up 37 windows on the computer...I was surprised he hadn't crashed the computer.


Well, one day I woke up to find that he had rotated the computer display 180 degrees....worked completely perfectly, everything was just completely rotated to upside down! Took me a day and a half and a very helpful Charter internet tech geek (definitely not his job, but kind enough to help when I was at wits' end), to figure out that by chance, pure chance, he had hit the key strokes necessary, at barely 3 years old, to rotate the whole display. I've never forgotten how to switch it back! lol And I have actually had to help out people from work who have had the same problem.



Thanks for sharing!

[GeriNY]

That is too funny, I'm glad you figured out how to fix it. If that had happened to me I would have totally freaked out. I'm always hitting or clicking something wrong. That is why dh got me an iPad, very user friendly as long as I don't try to update it.