I use my thumb to press alt, ctrl, and shift! I have a big thumb. :) Also those "garbage keys" are very useful. The Menu key on the right side of your keyboar

I use my thumb to press alt, ctrl, and shift! I have a big thumb. :) Also those "garbage keys" are very useful. The Menu key on the right side of your keyboard is, in Windows, a right click button. If I want to spell check something that is marked erroneous (such as "erroneous" when I tried to just spell it!) I can arrow over to it and use my Menu button to pop up a context menu that lets me select the correct word. The Windows keys are also awesome, there are a ton of useful shortcuts bound to them already, and you can always feel free to bind even more! Especially if you are in unix land, where binding keys is easier than on Windows. On Windows, the Windows key is reserved for system commands such as Window management. Win-arrow for docking, win-d to minimize everything, etc. Heck Win-# switches between applications in the order they are open on my task bar! Except for a few misbehaving apps (and the bloody web!), those extra keyboard keys mean the Windows UI is pretty much keyboard driven. I find it funny that people come over to Windows land from *nix and complain about how mouse driven things are! Of course you take take your favorite X windows manager and do all of the remapping yourself to get similar functionality. If you are using one of the keyboard based window managers already, think of it as a way to avoid the need for double bucky key-bindings. The FN key on laptops does suck, but for a lot of smaller laptops with reduced keyboards, there is no other way to access a lot of functionality. Things like back-light controls, external monitor settings, and so forth, are all vital and accessed through fn key combinations. They aren't /often/ used, but they are used often enough!