Function Keys

And here's Reason #2 why they call this the Office Keyboard - the whole row of F keys now have a different set of labels! The Fn labels are now printed on the front side of the buttons, instead of the top. The top of each button now has a new label.

Let's face it - as easy as it is to remember shortcut keys like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+S, how many other shortcut keys do you know? Realising that, Microsoft decided to remap the function keys to various Microsoft Office functions, essentially commandeering them for their own use.

However, each of those keys can also be remapped to YOUR own liking so Microsoft isn't exactly pushing their monopoly muscle on Joe Consumer. But what if you need the default Fn keys after you have remapped the keys for your own purposes? Simple enough, there's a nice F-Lock button which when enabled, reverts all the Fn keys back to their default mappings.

Microsoft also made another drastic change to keyboard layout by grouping the function keys in sets of three keys, instead of the usual 4 keys set. This is more or less the first thing you'll have to get used to.

Let's go through what each key does.

The F1-F3 keys seem to have been given the task of Home keys. F1 is the same good old HELP key which brings up the Help window in Office apps. It seems like this key is still mapped to F1. Either that or it just sends a help request message to the current application. In plain English, it seems that the Help key will work for most, if not all, properly coded Windows programs.

F2 is labeled as Office Home. Pressing it brings you to the Microsoft Office webpage. Strangely, it doesn't seem to work with systems that don't have Office XP installed.

F3 is set to bring up the Task Pane in Office XP. As such, it'll only work if you have Office XP installed. The Task Pane in Office XP is where commonly used tasks and information are displayed - a real gem when used properly.