Canada Computer is blowing out a netbook. It is currently (until January 3) only $200. After that it might go back to $300 or $250 (the previous selling price). <https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=710_577_367&item_id=117289> <http://forums.redflagdeals.com/canada-computers-canada-computers-200-13-3-ips-fhd-1920x1080-fanless-n3450-4gb-ram-32gb-ssd-m-2-12-9mm-metal-chassis-poormans-xps-13-2247404/> Points to consider o 13.3" o Celeron N3450 processor (Atom / Apollo Lake family). Low power in two senses: battery consumption and computing power. + no fan + 1920x1080 IPS matte display. A bit dim but OK. + very solid-feeling aluminum body. Thin. + I like the keyboard. US, not the Bilingual Canadian layout. + 4G of RAM. Not wonderful, but enough for most casual use - 32G eMMC "disk". This is too small for Windows and not generous for Linux. Trying to fit both would be difficult. + an unoccupied full-sized m2.SATA socket. Behind an access panel. - likely no support - firmware is a little slap-dash (why must CSM be enabled to boot from something other than the eMMC?) - the touchpad seems OK but not great. Someone thinks there will be improvements in touchpad handling with the just-released kernel, 4.20. - There is a fingerprint reader in the corner of the touchpad. I don't use fingerprint readers so I consider this a lose. I've got one. I installed a 128G m.2 SATA SSD and installed Fedora 29 on it. It seems to work well. There were a few adventures in installing it. A 512G m.2 SATA could be had for $88 this week. Prices for SSD seem to be trending down.
| From: James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | On 01/01/2019 12:48 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | > + I like the keyboard. US, not the Bilingual Canadian layout. | | It's bilingual because English and French speakers hate it equally! ;-) It's complicated. I will now demonstrate this. STOP READING HERE IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN MINUTIAE. We'd all think it was fine if we grew up with it. But most of us have not. To the extent that one hunts and pecks it would probably be OK. Those who think that being able to type other languages is important, should support this keyboard. I guess that "Knott" indicates scots ancestors <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic_orthography> But my fingers learned to touchtype more than 50 years ago and are set in their ways. It's actually annoying to try to figure out the standard these keyboards are supposed to conform to. The bilingual keyboard is apparently an instantiation of an ISO standard where the US keyboard is an ANSI standard. <https://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO> By default, I'd like to conform to ISO vs ANSI since I'm not a US Citizen (even so, I once was a member of an ANSI committee). The actual standard for the keyboard is probably CAN/CSA Z243.200-92. That is dated 1992 and reaffirmed in 2016. It costs money (roughly $100!) to get a copy. "All CSA PDF's now have Digital Rights Management (DRM) features: - Unlimited PDF access on any internet browser connected devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile phone). One License can be shared among many users. Use will be restricted to one concurrent session at a time. -Ability to download an offline browser accessed PDF on up to 3 devices. -Ability to print one complete copy on paper or as a standalone PDF. -All PDF's will be watermarked with your license information. For more informaiton call 1-(888)-361-0003" I hate DRM. The most useful discussion I've found is from the Quebec government. <https://www.tresor.gouv.qc.ca/ressources-informationnelles/architecture-dentreprise-gouvernementale/standards-et-normes/standard-sur-le-clavier-quebecois-sgqri-001/> Fun fact: the Quebec page gives alternative names for the keyboard, and one is "clavier LaBonté". LaBonté is a guy I've actually talked to (years ago). He's one of the committee members who managed to get iso8859-1 depricated (in favour of iso8859-15) because of a fight amongst francophones over OE (dipthong or ligature?). Of course the intro of the Euro symbol helped a lot. This does not match the engravings on any keyboard I have: <http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/images/ti/clavier.gif> It seems telling that this is from Quebec's Office de la langue francaise. LaBonté wrote <https://www.tresor.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/PDF/ressources_informationnelles/standard_clavier_quebecois/ISO_9995-7.pdf> Among its dubious claims is that in Canada, English writers use '.' or ',' as the "decimal sign" in "general usage" but French writers always use ','. I'd suggest the reverse. He also suggests replacing / and * for division and multiplication. Good luck with that.
On 01/01/2019 11:37 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Those who think that being able to type other languages is important, should support this keyboard. I guess that "Knott" indicates scots ancestors
I have seen my last name in both Irish and Scottish name books, but not English. However, as far as I know, my ancestors came from England. I like Guinness, but not Scotch. ;-)
The bilingual keyboard is apparently an instantiation of an ISO standard where the US keyboard is an ANSI standard. <https://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO> By default, I'd like to conform to ISO vs ANSI since I'm not a US Citizen (even so, I once was a member of an ANSI committee).
I have a U.S. keyboard, configured to use U.S. International layout, which provides some more characters, but with the U.S. layout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key#US-International Incidentally, back in the late '90s, I worked at IBM in Markham. Part of my work was testing the new systems on OS/2, Windows 95 & NT, with both English and French keyboards. There were many occasions when I'd be working with the wrong language keyboard.
On Tue, Jan 01, 2019 at 05:34:19PM -0500, David Mason via talk wrote:
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On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 11:52 AM James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On 01/01/2019 11:37 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Those who think that being able to type other languages is important, should support this keyboard. I guess that "Knott" indicates scots ancestors
I have seen my last name in both Irish and Scottish name books, but not English. However, as far as I know, my ancestors came from England. I like Guinness, but not Scotch. ;-)
The bilingual keyboard is apparently an instantiation of an ISO standard where the US keyboard is an ANSI standard. <https://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO> By default, I'd like to conform to ISO vs ANSI since I'm not a US Citizen (even so, I once was a member of an ANSI committee).
I have a U.S. keyboard, configured to use U.S. International layout, which provides some more characters, but with the U.S. layout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key#US-International
Incidentally, back in the late '90s, I worked at IBM in Markham. Part of my work was testing the new systems on OS/2, Windows 95 & NT, with both English and French keyboards. There were many occasions when I'd be working with the wrong language keyboard.
We had the same issue when I volunteered at the Daily Bread food-bank in 96 - 97. Someone donated brand new Dell's with Win95 for all the admin staff. As I was tapped to fill in for the CTO when she went on vacation, one of the things on my to do list was an upgrade the Executive Directors system. The Novell server at the time didn't have the disk capacity to do a network install so they were all done by a set of disks with no kickstart config. I did the install on a weekend. All upgrades were done on weekends when staff weren't working and I chose Canada as the location and Canadian keyboard from the list, didn't think anything of it at the time. The next Monday I got a call and was asked why her documents were printing with french diacritics. Turns out Canadian in the Win95 documentation meant French Canadian, or probably it was the ISO keyboard Hugh provided the link to. We had a chuckle over that one, but she didn't want me to switch her to the US layout. She said she liked the international elan those markings gave her documents.
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On Tue, Jan 01, 2019 at 11:37:09AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| From: James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org>
| On 01/01/2019 12:48 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: | > + I like the keyboard. US, not the Bilingual Canadian layout. | | It's bilingual because English and French speakers hate it equally! ;-)
It's complicated. I will now demonstrate this.
STOP READING HERE IF YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN MINUTIAE.
We'd all think it was fine if we grew up with it. But most of us have not.
To the extent that one hunts and pecks it would probably be OK.
Those who think that being able to type other languages is important, should support this keyboard. I guess that "Knott" indicates scots ancestors <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic_orthography>
But my fingers learned to touchtype more than 50 years ago and are set in their ways.
It's actually annoying to try to figure out the standard these keyboards are supposed to conform to.
The bilingual keyboard is apparently an instantiation of an ISO standard where the US keyboard is an ANSI standard. <https://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO> By default, I'd like to conform to ISO vs ANSI since I'm not a US Citizen (even so, I once was a member of an ANSI committee).
The actual standard for the keyboard is probably CAN/CSA Z243.200-92. That is dated 1992 and reaffirmed in 2016. It costs money (roughly $100!) to get a copy.
"All CSA PDF's now have Digital Rights Management (DRM) features: - Unlimited PDF access on any internet browser connected devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile phone). One License can be shared among many users. Use will be restricted to one concurrent session at a time. -Ability to download an offline browser accessed PDF on up to 3 devices. -Ability to print one complete copy on paper or as a standalone PDF. -All PDF's will be watermarked with your license information.
For more informaiton call 1-(888)-361-0003"
I hate DRM.
The most useful discussion I've found is from the Quebec government. <https://www.tresor.gouv.qc.ca/ressources-informationnelles/architecture-dentreprise-gouvernementale/standards-et-normes/standard-sur-le-clavier-quebecois-sgqri-001/>
Fun fact: the Quebec page gives alternative names for the keyboard, and one is "clavier LaBonté". LaBonté is a guy I've actually talked to (years ago). He's one of the committee members who managed to get iso8859-1 depricated (in favour of iso8859-15) because of a fight amongst francophones over OE (dipthong or ligature?). Of course the intro of the Euro symbol helped a lot.
This does not match the engravings on any keyboard I have: <http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/images/ti/clavier.gif> It seems telling that this is from Quebec's Office de la langue francaise.
LaBonté wrote <https://www.tresor.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/PDF/ressources_informationnelles/standard_clavier_quebecois/ISO_9995-7.pdf>
Among its dubious claims is that in Canada, English writers use '.' or ',' as the "decimal sign" in "general usage" but French writers always use ','. I'd suggest the reverse.
He also suggests replacing / and * for division and multiplication. Good luck with that.
If the laptops shipped with the Canadian Multilingual keyboard, I might actually not mind. But they don't. They ship with Canadian French, which is a totally different thing and is NOT a version of the ISO international keyboard. At least last time I saw a laptop in a store it was Canadian French, not Multilingual. I have read a claim that someone at IBM in Toronto that hated Quebec invented the Canadian French keyboard. I think I believe the story. Canadian French has « and » on the key taking up half of the left shift. A Canadian Multilingual instead has Ù and | on that key. Usually Canadian French has a vertical enter key, while the Multilingual usually has the horizontal enter key (like most US layout keyboards have too). -- Len Sorensen
On 01/07/2019 05:07 PM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote:
If the laptops shipped with the Canadian Multilingual keyboard, I might actually not mind. But they don't. They ship with Canadian French, which is a totally different thing and is NOT a version of the ISO international keyboard. At least last time I saw a laptop in a store it was Canadian French, not Multilingual.
I have seen those Canadian multilingual keyboards and they are a deal killer for me. I will not buy one. A friend, who's German, wound up with one of those and hated it so much she took it back. Perhaps that sort of reaction is why you're not seeing them. One can only hope. Meanwhile, I'm sticking with the U.S. International layout. It would be nice if they made that standard for North America English, as it has several more characters available and it would be nice to see them on the key tops. BTW, my ThinkPad came with a "Windows" key. I was able to buy a "Tux" sticker that nicely fit into the depression in the middle of the key.
On Mon, Jan 07, 2019 at 05:32:21PM -0500, James Knott via talk wrote:
I have seen those Canadian multilingual keyboards and they are a deal killer for me. I will not buy one. A friend, who's German, wound up with one of those and hated it so much she took it back. Perhaps that sort of reaction is why you're not seeing them. One can only hope.
Meanwhile, I'm sticking with the U.S. International layout. It would be nice if they made that standard for North America English, as it has several more characters available and it would be nice to see them on the key tops.
BTW, my ThinkPad came with a "Windows" key. I was able to buy a "Tux" sticker that nicely fit into the depression in the middle of the key.
I certainly buy machines with US keyboard layout myself. The US international looks very nice. I have never seen a keyboard actually labeled for it, although I see you can buy stickers for it. I hate having my left shift key shortened which the canadian multilingual (and canadian french) does. -- Len Sorensen
In case anyone is interested, they're selling the Asus Zenbook UX331UA at Costco for $799. It's very much like https://www.costco.ca/ASUS-UX331UA-Q52SP-CB-ZenBook-Bilingual-Notebook,-i5-8... but it has only 256GB SSD instead (the one on their website is $1177.99 and has 512GB SSD). It has the bilingual keyboard, though. Also, if you call the store and talk to "administrative staff" they should be able to tell you if they have any in stock. According to https://www.redflagdeals.com/deal/groceries/costco-east-weekly-deals-asus-ze... the sale is on until Jan 13th.
participants (7)
-
D. Hugh Redelmeier -
David Mason -
James Knott -
lsorense＠csclub.uwaterloo.ca -
Russell Reiter -
Tim Tisdall -
Znoteer