Thursday, January 29, 2009

WTF is “Sticky Keys”?

When I grew up with  computers sticky keys was what happened when I accidentally spilled Coke over the keyboard. Not so much anymore.

When running my laptop on battery the screen will dim after 60 seconds or so to save power, which works great when doing work. When watching YouTube videos it’s annoying. My solution is to click the shift key every now and then in order to prevent the dimming and not sending an unwanted keystroke which could maybe stop the playing.

Then it happens… in the middle of watching the video “Sticky Keys” appear. I click ‘ESC’ and the window disappears. During lunch today we started talking about this so I’ve checked it out.

If you click SHIFT 5 times in a row you can turn off sticky keys. This will enable a user to use SHIFT, CTRL, ALT or the Windows key by pressing one key at a time, alas working with one hand. Superb for people smoking or texting on their mobile with one hand while doing computer work with the other. Personally I’m not able to multitask and have now turned off the “Sticky Keys” (Control Panel –> Ease of Access Center –> Set up Sticky Keys).

I have stopped drinking soda with sugar several years ago so “Sticky Keys” is now ancient history – until I install a new computer that is.