The weird keyboard layout of Dell Inspiron Mini 9

The Inspiron Mini 9 is Dell’s first entry to the world of netbooks. To differentiate itself from the others, they decided to make its keypads larger than most 9″ netbooks. That’s great right? Since most 9″ (and even some 10″) netbooks have keypads that can frustrate people with big fingers. But by making the keypads larger, they had to sacrifice something. See for yourself. First thing you might notice is the lack of the F1-F12 keys at the top of the number keys. Actually, they are there sans F11 and F12. If you look closely you would see them on the ASDF row. I don’t know about you but I usually use alt-F4 to close an application and F5 to reload my browser or refresh my screen. With the Inspiron Mini 9, the shortcut for closing an app would be Alt-Fn-F. Next would be the Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys. Quite useful keys when browsing through a huge document and Dell decided to put it within the arrow keys. Actually, ...