Please please help before I chuck the bloody thing out the window!

[thefirstMrsDeVere]

I have just deleted a whole block of text for the upteenth time.

I was a typist (medical sec) for many years. I am used to a 'proper' keyboard but now only use laptops at home.

Why do I keep deleting things, moving pages and other annoying things?

I think its probably to do with the size of the keyboard and the way peripheral keys are laid out (function keys rather than querty). Does anyone else have this problem? It really is driving me nuts and I am about to start my degree. I have nightmares about it as a lot is done online and there is no undo button for the internet.

I have a toshiba satellite if that helps. I actually just navigated away from this page as I was typing that.

I just made the history bar menu come up as i was typing THAT!

Does it have a touch thing (no idea what they're called) instead of a mouse? Or a central mouse button?

My toshibas have had these and they are very sensitive which means you can easily brush them and delete text. There are some settings you can change to switch them off or make less sensitive but you will need someone considerably more geeky than me to tell you how.

I found once I realised it was this, I was more conscious of keeping fingers and thumbs out of the way while I typed...

You can get bluetooth keyboards for iPads etc - is it worth researching whether you can get a different keyboard for your laptop, IYSWIM? Something that you type more easily on? Amazon have loads - you'll just have to check compatibility.

Thanks for the quick replies. Yes willf it does have a pad thingy. Do you think thats what it is. Do I press the wrong combination of keys/pad by mistake?

Hassled I have got a new keyboard. I was met with looks of total puzzlement from OH and DS1 when I tried to explain why I needed one . Its much better but rubbish for typing in bed. It will be great if I sit at the table and do my essays etc but that would mean changing the habit of a lifetime.

Damn those three hours a week of typing I was forced to do at school! My typing style is as ingrained and a my dislike of peanut butter.

check your mousepad/trackpad setings.

you may be able to alter the sensitivity of it, or change it to a definite "click" touch, rather than a sensitive "brush" touch.

are you maybe hitting alt/ctrl keys instead of shift at times? that could have an effect, depending on combos hit.

other thing to investigate - does plugging a mouse in disable the trackpad?

becasue you could do that (although again, a bit crap for working in bed - but you could have a handy hardback book to act as mouse run)

Mine was doing this. It was the touchpad settings. You should have an icon for the touchpad on the taskbar on the right bottom corner. Right click it, and select 'properties'. I found disabling scrolling and draglock helped. Oh and you can also disable hotkeys if you're using Windows, but you have to be comfortable messing around in the registry to do that.

I think I do hit ctrl instead of shift and perhaps alt when I think I am hitting the space bar. The pad is right under the space bar so the chances are I am doing that too.

When you learn to touch type you rest your lower thumbs where the pad is now.

I will have a look into changing onto click touch, I think that should help. I think the biggest disasters happen when I do a few 'wrong' things at the same time. Whole pages disappear, I lose the website I am on and other things (history bar, favourites etc) appear from nowhere.

I know the keyboard is different because I hit the wrong qwerty keys quite a bit too.

Sigh.

Thanks for the tips.

sympathies, MrsdeVere.

My best friend is having similar troubles (likewise we both learned ot touch type at school)

she had to do a law essay last week. 5000 words.

she got to 4000, and lost the lot (issues like you are having)

she phoned me for tech support - I bollocked her for not having autosave turned on - essay irretrievable.

she re-did it.

got to 4500 words, and - yep, lost the lot.

she was not happy....

Thanks silver. Cant use an Apple with the Open University apparently causes all kinds of problems.
Your poor friend! I will definately sort out my word processing settings.

Thats another thing. I dont have Word on my lappy so will have to buy it. Is it easy to install and which one should get?

I have been using computors since the amstrad word processor but am clueless

if you are a student (which obviously you are! d'oh!) you get a discount.

I'd go for full office, if possible - it is likely you might ned powerpoint/excel at some point.

installation should be a doddle - bung disc in and follow instructions (long time since i did it on a pc though)

can you really not use Macs with OU?

bugger. there goes that second degree then (seriously - wa sthinking about some studying once dd2 is at pre-school more)

Most likely trackpad ishoos. had the same thing when I recently reinstalled my laptop and all my settings were changed.

Try typing something like your address over and over and seeing if the error occurs inthe same place?

(and contrary to popular belief, I'm also a typist, ex medical too, so I KNOW it's now mee!!)

Before buying any software can I ask what size your laptop is?

I only ask because last February I bought a couple of Windows 7 laptops in Asda Living at 247 pounds each, 15.6" screen, from Compaq (aka HP).

I generally dislike the multiple use of keys on laptops to give the functions, number pad, and cursor movement etc, but the larger ones have the number pad in a section on the right and generally have larger keys too.

I swapped one with a friend for an up-to-date desktop and LCD display and gave the other to my sister after I found problems with my multimedia USB keyboard (on Win 7 but not linux or Win XP there was a glitch and it acted as if I typed a stream of garbage every 15 minutes or so, messing up whatever I was working on). I always use a USB keyboard and bought a number (at 3.50 each) so I could have a standard key layout whichever machine I use.

Part of your problem sounds like the multifunction use of each key, and the size of keyboard (your words) suggests something smaller than 12" to me.

Although I generally like Toshiba (knowing they were around 20+ years ago, rugged, and with orange screens when I used them then!) I would in this case suggest you consider flogging yours and getting an alternative machine if possible.

Many laptops these days come with MS 'Starter' versions of Word and Excel (ie cut down versions of MS Office) without you spending anything extra with Microsoft, though the student deal may be worth considering if you absolutely must use MS Office eg some feature like Publisher which is not available any other way.

Alternatively look for OpenOffice (now renamed LibreOffice because Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and with Sun came the "OpenOffice" name). LibreOffice v3.3 was released on Tuesday this week for download and is free for Windows, Mac and Linux machines and should be quite capable of use for OU work (seriously, anyone who is considering study should ask the OU why they don't go to OpenOffice / LibreOffice rather than tie people to Microsoft).

I had this problem with my last laptop, a Sony Vaio. There was some combination, and I never did find out what, that would act like clicking "back".

Luckily (well, not really) that laptop was stolen and the replacement one - a later version of same laptop - did not do it.

I bought complete Office set, with Word, Excel and Outlook. Very easy to install.

I have a dell - can I reduce the sensitivity of the touch pad thingie (& if I can....how?)

I always have issues with laptops that have a trackpad and little wiggly mouse blob in the middle of the keyboard. Disable the mouspad in the control panel (attach a real mouse first) and I pull the rubber cover off the mouse stick in the middle of the keyboard.
Some laptops come with the trackpad set up with 'hotspots' so different commands can be used at a touch of the pad (eg touch top left and it goes 'home' etc) and that bugs the hell out of me.
Apple do large discounts for students and the discount on their insurance/warranty is (was) very large if you are a student.

Katy - in the Control Panel I have a 'Mouse' option, then within that control, there's a tab marked 'Pointer Options' which includes mouse speed, so you make the movement on the touch pad a bit less sensitive there, I hope.

JB - yes those 'in between keys' joysticks are painful on the thumb, aren't they. I use USB optical mouse (2 quid on Ebay) and USB keyboard on every PC I can. Exceptions are the iMac and one Linux PC.

Thanks NWG

Hope you tested that before thanking me else you will curse me double :)