Why it is better to use US keyboard even if you live in UK?
The UK keyboard has a typical layout which differs from US layout. Funnily enough, all other English speaking countries like USA, India, Australia etc. use US keyboard layout yet UK uses a typical non standard layout in spite of being an English speaking country!
It is not that you can’t type some words if you use a US keyboard. You can type all letters — the trick is to tell your computer that to use UK keyboard layout.
Now why I think US layout is better? Here are the reasons.
- Left Shift key is larger (my favorite)!
- You still press Shift + F3 to get £ sign!
- You find many uses of AltGr. In UK keyboard you only use it for € typing!
- Accented characters like ú can still be typed using AltGr.
- Typing # is easier as you press only one key — good for most programmers.
- You can convert US keyboard to US International layout which gives you access to lot more symbols! You can quickly toggle between US and US International layout from task bar!
Setting set up as UK keyboard in Windows
to get this, press these keys [AltGr = Right Alt]
# = [\|]
\ = AltGr [\|]
| = AltGr Shift [\|]
“ = Shift [2]
£ = Shift [3]
€ = AltGr [4]
‘ = [‘“]
@ = Shift [‘“]
` = [`~]
¦ = AltGr [`~]
~ = Shift [\|]
á é í ó ú = AltGr [letter]
So you see, you are still getting all the characters and even more (with US international setup). So it is a mystery why keyboards in UK are sold with a different layout from US keyboards! There is a layout called UK Extended in Windows but I have never seen anyone using it and US International layout still offers more extra symbols.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards
In theory, adopting US keyboard in UK should bring down price of computers slightly because they factories don’t have to manufacture a separate keyboard for UK market (which is quite large).