The Tyranny of QWERTY!

[elfs]

So, my company has forced (yes, forced!) me to have a Windows machine. The Billy Tax is unavoidable. Fortunately, I've been allowed to run it in a separate VM on top of CentOS, so I'm not too distressed by it.

I was pleased to find out that XP has a Dvorak mode out of the box (unlike 98, which required some funky downloads to make it so), but I am not so pleased with the fact that, no matter what, you must log in to the box with QWERTY. You can't change the login. Which means that I'm stuck looking at the keys to figure out where all the letters, numbers, and symbols in my password are. I hate that. Why can't there be a setting in XP, Login_KB_Layout, like there is in Linux? I can set the preferred language (which affects the keyboard layout) but not the layout setting itself. If the keyboard is set to "US - Dvorak" as the default, the login page reverts to QWERTY.

How strange and annoying!

Comments

[katybeth]

I have not verified this:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155404&cid=13031147

[lionman.livejournal.com]

Under the Accessibility Options menu, under the General tab, there's a option for 'Apply all settings to login desktop' and 'Apply all settings to defaults for new users'.

Have you tried to see if those might cause the login keyboard to use your Dvorak setup. I haven't tried it, but there's some indication in TechNet that your keyboard layout and the Accessability Options are linked together.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Totally unrelated, but... Haibane Renmei!

I had by some fluke found two DVDs of Haibane Renmei at a local Blockbuster, and really liked it, but the rest of the series has proven completely impossible to track down. My anime-fu is very weak :(

[elgatocurioso.livejournal.com]

I prefer the Dvorak layout, but I'm a software programmer and we often hold meetings at people's desks when reviewing code. Unfortunately, the Dvorak layout pretty much frustrated the hell of any visitor who wanted to show me something on my PC so I had to revert.

I'm waiting for this (http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/). I hope it's reasonably priced and allows for instant QWERTY to Dvorak.

My Suggestions

[sduan.livejournal.com]

To elfs:

You CAN achieve that. In your keyboard settngs dialog, select the "default language settings" to Dvorak. Restart windows, come back to this dialog and remove the rest of the language. There are something funny going on that you have to do it this way.

To elgatocurioso:

That keyboard is out and it is over a thousand dollars! It that reasonable? I don't know. But for the moment I have bought a TypeMatrix that is just $100. The website where I bought it from tricked me into thinking it is a dvorak skin. So make sure check which skin it is.