deskthority

Hey all,

I'm planning to buy a laptop but I'd like to have an ANSI layout. I don't care about what's actually written on the key (I'm touch-typing since decades) but I'd like the physical layout of the keys to be ANSI, not ISO.

The two only choices I can find for the laptop I'm considering are either "Layout: Azerty BE" (this one is definitely ISO) or "Layout: anglais international".

Does anyone know what "anglais international" implies as for the physical layout?

By googling on "clavier anglais international" / Images : about half of the pictures are ISO and the other half are ANSI, which doesn't help.

Moreover as far as I can tell "anglais international" could be a "translation" for both "U.S. international" and "U.K. international".

I take it I've got about a 50% / 50% chance to get an ANSI layout (great) or an ISO layout (lame).

Any idea on what I'll be getting should I pick that "anglais international" thinggy?

(pictures of the laptops on the various websites are rubbish and really do not help in that it's always the same picture : showing obviously ANSI layouts for ISO laptops, etc.)

Thanks for any help,

(btw I'll be ordering that from Belgium)

Note that it's not that much of a big deal since I'll be hooking an HHKB Pro 2 / ANSI to the laptop anyway most of the time but it'd still be nice if I could get an ANSI keyboard on the laptop itself as well.

Which laptop?

Isn't that something the seller has to be able to answer? That's his job after all. I'm afraid educated guesses from an internet forum will only bring you so far...

Yes it could be either US or GB international... depends a lot on the region and the company in question. depending which company laptop you are looking at, you might be able to get it directly from them if they have a 'business' direct buy type service in place. Otherwise if not, you might be able to find US ANSI equivalent keyboard part for that model and have it fitted after purchase by a qualified service so as not to loose any warranty. Or at extreme just import the whole damn thing from US.

You could order the laptop in The Netherlands. It's a no-ISO country right next to yours.

Daniel Beardsmore wrote:Which laptop?

I was thinking about a Lenovo Thinkpad E531 or even a cheaper one like the Lenovo B590 / Core i3. I'm typically working on a big fat desktop but I'll be doing "co-working" one day a week starting from september so I'll need a little laptop to carry around.

Btw I plan to buy a Lenovo with an Intel GPU because it's to install Linux on it and I've read several success stories about Linux on Lenovo laptops (and horror stories with Linux on laptops with NVidia chipsets), like this one:

http://zameer.nl/blog/?p=1794

I know I'll probably have to deal with some issues (like WiFi driver SNAFUs) but I'm using Linux since the mid-nineties so I can probably figure it out :lol

Halvar wrote:Isn't that something the seller has to be able to answer? That's his job after all.

Well that's a good question and I already tried that with one seller, hence my question here

I'm planning to order online and I'm not sure that asking sellers if it's ISO or ANSI would help a lot: no later than yesterday I was the one explaining to my usual shop that, no, QWERTY U.K. and QWERTY U.S. weren't the same physical layout

People outside of GH / DT tend to not know what we mean by ISO / ANSI keyboards etc.

I'm afraid educated guesses from an internet forum will only bring you so far...

True but Kurrk's answer is very, very interesting and I may follow his advice. If .nl is indeed typically using ANSI layout then I may simply order from there and be good to go

(of course I'd have to find a reliable .nl seller which ships to Belgium at a good price)