The number lock button
 

Simple question: Why?

Am I missing something? What point does it serve other than irritate by being inadvertantly pressed and 'nothing appearing'.

Anyone here find it a useful thing?


...My next rant will be about the semi-colon...

personally I don't like to enter numbers repeatedly, I would rather just track all over my screen with the arrow keys where I rest my right hand

The Insert key is equally as annoying. I've never intentionally used it and in my early computer days there was much head scratching because I'd pressed it instead of Delete and my work was being eaten up as I typed. :O

the num lock key is of great use to people who enter lots of numeric data.

if you don't want a numlock key buy an apple iMac. no numlock key on an iMac.

Num lock combined with numeric / alpha keys on a laptop has reduced me to tears on occasions. :{

No surprise that my personal laptop is a Lenovo with a separate numeric key-pad built-in. I do a lot of numeric work (spreadsheets and the like). :ok:

SD

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The number lock button

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Because not all keyboards have a separate numerical keypad area. Many laptops have an area of the "letters" part of the keypad which doubles up as a numerical keypad, but only after the "Numlock" key has been activated

I get so fed up typing lots of numbers into my laptop while having to continually use the page up & page down keys that I sometimes carry around a separate Microsoft keyboard (£10 from PC World) that I plugged in. It makes typing in much easier as I can keep the number lock on all the time.


Going off topic, what I hate is the different keyboards you get in different countries - working out how to get an @ in some European countries, finding the A in a different location and so on. One hotel must have got fed up with guests asking about this and put instructions on their computer.

Don't hold your breath after pressing the Scroll Lock button :=