americanizing??

Bigciccone

my girlfriend is from germany and her laptop is european, and she was going to give it to me.. the thing is the keyboard is a little different i was wandering if its possible to change it around to make it american

RWB

Most laptops have replacement keyboards, you could look up the make and model of the laptop online and look for replacement parts.

CB

No need to change the keyboard itself, just change the setting in windows to whichever US profile matches the keyboard, and it'll start to accept input as if it was a US keyboard.

Some of the keys might not look exactly right, but shift+4 will still give you '$', even if there is not $ printed on the key.

kryyst

You actually need to do both of these things to truly Americanize it. Changing the language settings to US English will change what the keys do so. The letters will all be in the same place between the two but some of the symbols and special characters will differ. If you want your keyboard to look American and respond correctly you need to swap the keyboard as well.

Bigciccone

how do you change it in windows. and also how much do replacement keyboards go for?

CB

In my opinion, the new keyboard panel would not be worth the money. I don't know about your specific model, but there things are generally over a hundred dollars.

Edit: Kryyst posted a better way to deal with the settings, so I removed mine.

kryyst

To change the language settings go to Control Panel>Regional and Language Options

In there you'll see the settings for the default system language and under the language tab and the details button you can change your keyboard language type.

Bigciccone

thank youu!

Leonardo

just paint over the keys and pretend



I understand your dilemma. My wife is German and had to learn the US English keyboard.