Not(e) Worth It

I'm not a serious gamer, and little did I know that one day I would actually use a wireless gaming controller actively. Most of the time it's not for playing games though - I'm using it as a partial replacement of the keyboard and mouse, by mapping custom commands to the buttons. Shortcuts without even touching the keyboard? Bringing keyboard ninja skills to the next level ;) The wireless controller I use - Logitech F710 It all began when I started experiencing some pain in my wrist from too much mouse use. A friend loaned me a Logitech F710 wireless game controller*, and to my delight, I found that Logitech provides software to map the buttons to keystrokes and the analog sticks to the mouse. Since I use a lot a lot of keyboard shortcuts in my everyday computing, it was a great solution. Now I usually have my hands comfortably on the controller, only leaving it occasionally to type or when I need precision mousing. I even mapped Aero Flip so I could switch between d...

Located in the top right region of the keyboard, the Insert key is quite underused. When Insert is activated, anything you type will overwrite the original text. Annoying if turned on unknowingly, but useful in some situations, such as when you're batch replacing text. It'll save you the extra keystrokes to backspace/delete. Watch the screencast below to get what I mean. I probably use it most when I'm coding and just making minor changes. How to know if insert is turned on: your text cursor changes to a box or a horizontal line instead of a vertical line. Another interesting use of the Insert key is to copy and paste .

Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V (copy and paste) are probably among the most used keyboard shortcuts. Did you know, though that there’s another pair of shortcuts? Try Ctrl+Insert and Shift+Insert ;)  The usefulness is pretty limited though, since you'll usually need 2 hands to use them. (Huh, Insert is an often overlooked key, isn't it? Look out for future musings on the underdog keys on the keyboard.)