Keyboards with a big L-shaped "enter" covering the place Pipe usually is

I suppose the logic behind these keyboards are that because pipe and backslash are used rather more infrequently in current windows versions than they were in MS-DOS, it would make sense to donate the prime keyboard real estate occupied by the extra-large backslash/pipe key to the more commonly used enter. This logic rests wholly on four tragically flawed assumptions:

1. That you're using windows or the mac os (although i've never in my life seen a mac keyboard with the funky-L enter);
2. That you aren't doing any kind of programming in a language that uses backslash for escape sequences or the pipe as some kind of operator (for example, or);
3. That you have no real interest in having some kind of neutral, non-dangerous key between enter and backspace;
4. And that you don't really care too much about having a full-size backspace key.

I've never seen anyone purposefully hit the upward leg of an oversized Enter key in order to produce an Enter.

• Take a keyboard with a big L-shaped "enter" key. Observe the group of 6 keys ("insert", "delete" etc)
• Move this group down one row. After all, that breathing room between these keys and the cursor keys is wasted space to be used for gimmicks.
• Fill the newly created top row with the "print screen", "scroll lock" and "pause" keys. This will subsequently destroy any underlying perceptions you may already hold about exactly where the "delete", "home" and "end" keys are. But standardisation is for pansies, kids.
Now the top right corner of the keyboard is ready to be filled with non-standard buttons. Often the "Lock" indicators will be spaced out for no apparent reason. A large "sleep" button is added, with no "wake up" button. In my experience, the sleep button will do nothing but make the computer sleep. This is unfortunate; not only is it inconvenient to have useful keys shuffled around, but the "sleep" button raises peoples' curiosities.

"What does that button do?" *bang* "Hey, cool! Now, how do we wake it up again?"...

Although I must admit there's subjectivity here, several of these keyboards, specifically several old Packard Bell models, are absolutely wonderful keyboards. Yes, there is wasted space, and yes, intelligence in design is obtained when there isn't anything left to take away. However, this is a small price to pay for the pipe being moved to a more convient location in some cases (under the enter key, next to the right of shift). In addition many so called superfluous buttons added to keyboards nowadays can easily be remapped with included software or freeware off the net, giving you more keys to play with, and making shortcuts shorter.

Granted, there can sometimes be confusion if a keyboard has no wake up button, but most keyboards shipped today have the sleep button also work as the wake up button, and have an icon to indicate this. People not able to figure this out aren't stupid, but they aren't following the important principle RTFM.

These countries have L-shaped enter keys:

• Belgium
• Canada (French)
• the Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Hungary
• Italy
• Latin America (It's not a country, I know.)
• the Netherlands
• Norway
• Poland
• Portugal
• Slovakia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• the United Kingdom
• Yugoslavia