Keyboard keys - odd question!

[Spike]

OK, this question is about as odd as they come.

A friend of mine from Austria has given his son a notebook with a german keyboard. Not a serious problem, but all keys are in the wrong place, and shift characters on the wrong keys (from a uk perspective). Is it actually possible to buy the actual keys for a notebook keyboard to rearrange them? lol

 

[Nodsu]

You can buy sticker sets for all kinds of keyboard layouts. They come in black or white and contain all the punctuation/accented stuff that may be in the wrong place.

You may have to swap the y and z keys physically though.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Live with that keyboard and load the proper language keyboard-driver.
German keyboards aren't that far off anyway, Z/Y is the main difference, and you get a buch of umlaut-ed keys on the right of P and L, that's all.
Alternatively, pick up any UK-keyboard and plug that in the back of the laptop. Check if it needs PS/2 or USB.

 

[Spike]

As I say - it's not to much of a problem. The correct keyboard layout is already installed on it (german - austria). I had to go over to Vienna to fix up a friends machines and wireless back last year, and quickly got used to it myself.

The only problem on the laptop though are things like the slashes, quotation marks, currency marks etc. It can be lived with, but it's just a pain.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

It depends on who makes the laptop.
Some makers either let you buy and change keyboard yourself, or you can hand it in to have it replaced with the lanuage of your choice.

If that isn't an option, the stickers that Nodsu suggests seems the easiest way to go about it. Just change the keyboard layout to english, and add stickers where you need them.
Or you can set up hot-keys for changing between the keyboard layout, so that you'll hit the shortcut, and press the correct key (as it now corresponds with what is printed on the keys) and press the shortcut again.
That's how I used my Austrian laptop (with german keyboard), and the exact opposite of how I use my new Vaio (switch to use norwegian characters, which I know exactly where are).

Anyways, that's my 0.02$