On 7/15/2015 11:39 AM, scott wrote:
>> Strangely, my UK k/board has a dollar-sign over the 4 key.
>
> Ditto here, the '$' is an important symbol for denoting string variable
> names in BASIC! I don't have too much use for the # symbol.
>

Or the "Pound" symbol as it is called in America. (Shift+3 on American 
keyboards.)

>> With a lot or retailers, nowadays. It is up to you to spec it. The
>> retailer just sits in the middle. The price of cheep components, I fear.
>
> Yes. Often the seller doesn't know any detail at all on the item and the
> best you have to go on is the photo and any buyer reviews/comments.
>

Yes, it is just a stock item. I tend to use Maplin for bits. Al least 
they have shops where the staff know the stock and there is one near me.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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> Or the "Pound" symbol as it is called in America. (Shift+3 on American
> keyboards.)

Now that's confusing. What about hashtags, do they have poundtags?

> Yes, it is just a stock item. I tend to use Maplin for bits. Al least
> they have shops where the staff know the stock and there is one near me.

Personally I'm finding more and more that I can become far more 
knowledgable than the salesperson by spending a short amount of time 
researching online. And speaking to several friends and family who 
do/have worked in various physical shops I would certainly never assume 
any salesperson was acting in your best interests. You're probably OK 
discussing resistors with the local Maplins geek though :-)

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On 7/15/2015 1:48 PM, scott wrote:
>> Or the "Pound" symbol as it is called in America. (Shift+3 on American
>> keyboards.)
>
> Now that's confusing. What about hashtags, do they have poundtags?
>

I don't know. I thought that too.

>> Yes, it is just a stock item. I tend to use Maplin for bits. Al least
>> they have shops where the staff know the stock and there is one near me.
>
> Personally I'm finding more and more that I can become far more
> knowledgable than the salesperson by spending a short amount of time
> researching online.

When I worked offshore. I had to make sure I was ordering the right 
thing. It was a long swim to change it. :-)

> And speaking to several friends and family who
> do/have worked in various physical shops I would certainly never assume
> any salesperson was acting in your best interests.

:-) Now, why do you say that? ;-)

In my day job. I work with Customer Service managers and the like.

<Pump up the sugar.> <Pump up the sugar.>
No, that was the sales manager. But CS are just as bad.



> You're probably OK
> discussing resistors with the local Maplins geek though :-)

True but try it at PC World and you will walk out with a printer and 
free toaster.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> On 7/15/2015 8:52 AM, Anthony D. Baye wrote:
> > "Anthony D. Baye" <Sha### [at] spamnomorehotmailcom> wrote:
>
> >
> > For the record: It's not that good. About all they've got going for them is that
> > they are polite and, so far, honest.
> >
>
> Polite and honest are good. :-)

Perhaps true but, to earn more than three stars from me, they would need to send
me a working device.

As it is, they sent me two damaged keyboards, which I then had to return at my
own expense.  While they responded to my complaints, promptly and politely, and
actually did refund the money as soon as I sent them a tracking number for the
second keyboard, they did not compensate me for the extra $8 that I spent on
postage.

So the most they'll get from me is two stars.

Regards,
A.D.B.

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I ended up ordering from Parts-People.com which is at the top of the sponsored
results when I google the part.

The website looks good.  According to my research, they're actually a store
based out of Austin Tx, and they advertise themselves as the #1 source for
official DELL parts.

Also, they have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.

Maybe I should have gone with them first.  I'll see when I get the part.

Regards,
A.D.B.

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On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 19:32:15 -0400, Anthony D. Baye wrote:

> I ended up ordering from Parts-People.com which is at the top of the
> sponsored results when I google the part.
> 
> The website looks good.  According to my research, they're actually a
> store based out of Austin Tx, and they advertise themselves as the #1
> source for official DELL parts.
> 
> Also, they have an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.
> 
> Maybe I should have gone with them first.  I'll see when I get the part.

I'll be interested to know how that goes - I've got a couple Dell systems 
here, and one never knows when parts might become a necessity.

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 7/15/2015 11:05 PM, Anthony D. Baye wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>> On 7/15/2015 8:52 AM, Anthony D. Baye wrote:
>>> "Anthony D. Baye" <Sha### [at] spamnomorehotmailcom> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> For the record: It's not that good. About all they've got going for them is that
>>> they are polite and, so far, honest.
>>>
>>
>> Polite and honest are good. :-)
>
> Perhaps true but, to earn more than three stars from me, they would need to send
> me a working device.
>

Fair point! It is high on my requirements too. :-)

> As it is, they sent me two damaged keyboards, which I then had to return at my
> own expense.  While they responded to my complaints, promptly and politely, and
> actually did refund the money as soon as I sent them a tracking number for the
> second keyboard, they did not compensate me for the extra $8 that I spent on
> postage.
>
As Scott said...


> So the most they'll get from me is two stars.
>

Quite generous considering the circumstances.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Am 15.07.2015 um 14:48 schrieb scott:
>> Or the "Pound" symbol as it is called in America. (Shift+3 on American
>> keyboards.)
>
> Now that's confusing. What about hashtags, do they have poundtags?

My suspicion is that this terminology is a relic of early information 
technology, when 7-bit character encoding was still the norm. In the US 
this of course meant ASCII, but in other countries slight variations 
thereof were standardized, replacing less-commonly used characters with 
local special characters.

One such character code mapped to a non-ASCII character by some national 
standards was decimal 35 (0x23). While the ASCII character set maps this 
code to the hash character ("#"), the corresponding UK 7-bit character 
encoding standard (BS 4730) repurposed this code for - ta-da! - the 
pound sterling character ("£").

American computer users were certainly blissfully unaware of this fact, 
and also possibly blissfully unaware of the proper term for their "#" 
sign; so when in newsgroups or on other computer-based discussion 
platforms they would see Brits use a character that on their terminals 
showed up as "#", and see the Brits call it the "pound character", they 
might have been quick to adopt that name for the hash.

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On 8/1/2015 11:12 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 15.07.2015 um 14:48 schrieb scott:
>>> Or the "Pound" symbol as it is called in America. (Shift+3 on American
>>> keyboards.)
>>
>> Now that's confusing. What about hashtags, do they have poundtags?
>
> My suspicion is that this terminology is a relic of early information
> technology, when 7-bit character encoding was still the norm. In the US
> this of course meant ASCII, but in other countries slight variations
> thereof were standardized, replacing less-commonly used characters with
> local special characters.
>
> One such character code mapped to a non-ASCII character by some national
> standards was decimal 35 (0x23). While the ASCII character set maps this
> code to the hash character ("#"), the corresponding UK 7-bit character
> encoding standard (BS 4730) repurposed this code for - ta-da! - the
> pound sterling character ("£").
>
> American computer users were certainly blissfully unaware of this fact,
> and also possibly blissfully unaware of the proper term for their "#"
> sign; so when in newsgroups or on other computer-based discussion
> platforms they would see Brits use a character that on their terminals
> showed up as "#", and see the Brits call it the "pound character", they
> might have been quick to adopt that name for the hash.


That sounds right to me (2015).

When I used to work for a living. It was fun working on a machine that 
had lost its CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
The keyboard would revert to US settings but the letters didn't. ;-)
Remembering where the  backslash, at sign and inverted comma keys were, 
was a pain.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Am 02.08.2015 um 14:30 schrieb Stephen:

> When I used to work for a living. It was fun working on a machine that
> had lost its CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
> The keyboard would revert to US settings but the letters didn't. ;-)
> Remembering where the  backslash, at sign and inverted comma keys were,
> was a pain.

Tell me about it. The German keyboard layout shares exactly five(!) 
punctuation character locations with the US one, AND has two letter keys 
swapped.

I never bothered to try and remember the US locatin of characters. All I 
cared about was that typing "kezb gr" (sic!) would usually fix the mess.


And then there was the keyboard of my first own PC. One of the things I 
did pretty early after unboxing was to install some Norton Commander 
clone which, as you may recall, made heavy use of the function keys as 
hotkeys for important stuff; I knew most of them by heart.

So a moment later I was sitting in front of the thing with a puzzled 
expression on my face, struggling to find the F7 key.

"Okay, let's do this systematically," I thought, and went through the 
function key row: "Here's F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F5, F8... Wait, *WHAT?!*"


The good news was that yes, the second F5 key behaved exactly like the 
good old F7 key. Phew! :)

Also, the keyboard was a genuine Cherry keyboard (albeit branded 
differently by the OEM) with easily removable keycaps, so a letter to 
the OEM and a few days later I was able to swap the keycap for a 
properly labeled one.

I think I still have the F5 keycap somewhere.

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