I've had they keyboard off my Latitude after chucking Apple juice over it. Was easy enough, and didn't seem to be a problem when the bloke came to replace the heatsink after a later (and unrelated) problem... In fact, their tech support wouldn't send anyone out with a replacement until I'd taken it off!

While it fixes the immediate problem the keyboard is now not a UK standard layout (which requires the [\|] key to be next to the left hand side [shift] key, now it's to the left of the right hand side [shift] key). Previously touch typists were in trouble with any key on the bottom letter row, now they're still in trouble when they need the [\|] key. Better, but hardly standard (Dell's claims that "other manufacturers are using this layout now" is no excuse, it's not standard compliant and will cause problems.)

Of course why the UK standard layout has that stupid 1980s-esque double row [return] key in the first place (thus forcing the [\|] onto the bottom row and leading to all these issues) is another mystery entirely...

When I first read about this, I thought "Sounds like they used a North American keyboard and just switched a few keys around" We have the larger left shift here. Now they just finished the job and gave you a full NA standard keyboard with the / beside the right shift.

On the bright side, I won't have any problems typing on your keyboards now

\many year ago, the left S\hiFT was next to Z. \it took me ages to get capital letters right when \ moved in between S\hiFT and Z. Fortunately, this change happened after it was common for terminals to be able to output lower case. (\old terminals marked real capitals with a \ in front.)

\the new layout, with \ where I expect the right \sHI\ft, just changes the capital letters that come out wrong.

It could be worse. Chinese keyboards lack |, which makes it awkward to use filters from the command line.

Which two non-alphanumeric keys are hit most often while typing?

Space and Enter, closely followed by Shift.

So keyboards should have a big Spacebar, big Enter key and big Shift key.

...when they refuse to honour the warranty because THEY instructed the customer to replace their keyboard. Similarly, if they charge for the call out of their customer support to replace the keyboards that are *NOT* "fit for purpose" in the first case !! I can just visualise the teams of Dell minions scurrying all over EU fixing the keyboards and seriously hitting their bottom-line (in Septic-speak) or net profit before tax in proper English !!

I think selling 6-months Dell futures now might be a good idea !!