You don't think "many people" build machines by shopping at retailers like TigerDirect? It might not be the vast minority, but it's still "many people".
The reason I believe that is because unless every keyboard has that key, then a major operating system that has traditionally been fine without it shouldn't suddenly expect it unless there is some major advantage to requiring it.
*edit:
According to wikipedia, this key became a standard key on PC keyboards. Obviously I'm of the opinion that this should not have happened. But at this point it's ridiculous for me to complain about it.
> You don't think "many people" build machines by shopping at retailers like TigerDirect? It might not be the vast minority, but it's still "many people".
No, I don't think that "many people" do this in the grand scheme of things. I'd bet less than 3% (possibly much less) of new PCs for home use are purchased this way. But I don't have any stats for this.
> The reason I believe that is because unless every keyboard has that key, then a major operating system that has traditionally been fine without it shouldn't suddenly expect it unless there is some major advantage to requiring it.
I understand your point, but I disagree. This means that there can be no progress. There have been keyboards in the past that didn't have the Alt key or the Escape key. There have been keyboards with Meta keys. Hardware can and should change, and software should change with it and not be trapped in the past. European keyboards often have an "AltGr" key that allows inserting characters that to my knowledge cannot be easily inserted from a standard US keyboard (Wikipedia says Ctrl+Alt does the same thing, but it doesn't on my system). I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that if you want this functionality, you get a keyboard that supports it.
I use this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det...
The reason I believe that is because unless every keyboard has that key, then a major operating system that has traditionally been fine without it shouldn't suddenly expect it unless there is some major advantage to requiring it.
*edit: According to wikipedia, this key became a standard key on PC keyboards. Obviously I'm of the opinion that this should not have happened. But at this point it's ridiculous for me to complain about it.