Key Tweaking

My new laptop came equipped with a numeric keypad, it has been a while since I had a computer with one of those. Since I have gotten used to working without one I decided to turn it in to something more useful. I found this handy little program Key Tweak which remaps keys for other uses.

I am one of those people who uses Page Up, Page Down, Home and End expressively and their placement on the standard keyboard configuration is a less then optimal. So I remapped some of the numerical keys to take over those roles. I also added volume control, mute, pause/play, next song and last song to some of the buttons for easier music control. For easier internet use I mapped last page and next page to two of the keys. And finally since the arrow buttons are annoyingly small on my laptop I turned 1,2,3,5 in to arrow keys.

After this change the numpad went from being more or less unused to the new home for my right hand, since I am now using it constantly. This new configuration might seem slightly confusing, especially looking at the image at the top of this post but it actually makes a lot of sense and took me less then 5 minutes to get used to.