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I don’t know about you - But I hate the Caps Lock key. I never use it and occasionally I mistake it for the shift key. I always wanted it to be something else or at least not be there. The Caps Lock key on your keyboard is frequently renowned as the most useless key. Even the One Laptop Per Child laptops have dismissed the caps lock key in favor of a more ergonomic Ctrl key! Well perhaps it is not as useless as Scroll Lock but it is taking up very valuable keyboard estate in its current position. Amongst all keys in close proximity to a touch typist’s hand placement, caps lock is by far the least used (if typing correctly).

Anything caps lock does can be done by the shift key and more efficiently - except when you’re writing something in all caps, which should be quite rarely. Case in point, I had a friend that refused to use the shift key for reasons unknown. If he had to capitalize a letter, he would press caps lock, type the letter and press caps lock again to turn it off. Some would argue caps lock is important for the disabled with poor motor-control but Window’s “sticky keys” is a much better solution for them anyway.

What can it be remapped to?

• Esc
  The escape key is a pretty useful key for certain applications (*cough* Vim) or for closing Windows and prompts. Since it normally requires removing the hand from its regular typing position, remapping it right beside your pinky seems pretty efficient! Also, the Ctrl-Shift-Esc combo is very handy and this makes it tons easier to press (don’t know what it does, try it out!).
• Backspace
  Just like the Esc key, backspace is fairly out of the way and hard to press yet is used very often. Makes a lot of sense to make it more accessible.
• Windows Key
  Personally, I have mine remapped to the Windows Key (yes another hated key) simply because neither my IBM Thinkpad nor my IBM Model M includes one. I use the Windows key mainly to show desktop (Win-D) or to open up a Windows Explorer window (Win-E).
• Ctrl
  Although the control key is very accessible, some people find it uncomfortable to press in its current position.
• Enter key or Space Bar or Anything Else
  What can be more fun than having Enter keys on both sides of the keyboard! Or if your thumb gets tired, you can start using your pinky to type spaces instead!

How to remap Caps Lock to another key
For Linux users (on an X environment like KDE, Gnome), it’s pretty easy to remap keys using the xmodmap command.

For Windows users, there are programs that will remap keys for you but if you’re not afraid to tinker with your registry, you can do this manually and it only requires adding one registry value:

1. Go to Start->Run and type in ‘regedit’ to open the registry editor.
2. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
Note: Keyboard Layout, not Keyboard Layouts!

1. Go to Edit->New->Binary Value and name it ‘Scancode Map’
2. Now double-click and edit the value to the following, replacing ## ## with the scan code of the key you wish to map caps lock to.

00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 ## ## 3a 00 00 00 00 00

The scan code for Windows Key is 5B E0, Esc is 01 00, Ctrl is 1D 00. Full list of scan codes and a more detailed tutorial is here.

1. Reboot your computer and say goodbye to caps lock!

How often do you use the caps lock key? Got another candidate for the most useless key? Have you remapped caps lock to something else? Leave a comment!

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