Swap Control and Caps Lock
I come from a Unix background. Therefore, I like my control to be where caps lock normally is. And just so it's still available, I like caps lock where control is. This is commonly referred to as swapping control and caps lock.
Sun does this all the time. Or at least used to. It's been years since I used one of their systems. On a windows system, this can be accomplished by swapping the functionality of the keys.
This page has all the details you need. Summary for the lazy:
Add a binary registry key called "Scancode Map" at
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout" with the value of "00000000 00000000 03000000 3A001D00 1D003A00 00000000".
Anyhow, swapping the functionality of these two keys does a few things.
- Reduces the distance my pinky travels to hit the control key. I used to use Emacs all day everyday - when you do that, it's essential that the control key is easily accessible. Even in a Windows world, it's still kind of nice since a lot of shortcuts use the control key.
- Reduces the number of times that I mistakenly hit the CAPS LOCK KEY AND END UP WITH A BUNCH OF TEXT IN ALL CAPS.
- Causes other people grief when they try to use my keyboard and end up with a 'S' in their document when all they wanted to do was save something by hitting 'Ctrl+s'.
- Causes me grief because Remote Desktop is crap.
Just so we are clear here, I am talking about the control key at the bottom left of the keyboard. It's the only one I ever use. The one on the right side might as well not even exist.