Being an old-school computer user, I have come to expect that certain things work a certain way. Like Alt+F4 to close the current application. Even though that originally was a feature of Windows, my Linux Mint desktop comes with that key combo enabled by default, because Linux developers are cool like that.
I have a Lenovo laptop with Windows 8.1 on it. I only keep it around for cases where I have a hardware peripheral or software application that wants Windows. Today, I was finished using one such application, and I hit Alt+F4, and the volume slider went up. No, that is not what I wanted.
So I looked for an answer. On Lenovo's community site, basically you have to change this setting "Hotkey Mode" in the BIOS. But if it is not in the BIOS, you need a piece of software called either "Lenovo Settings" or "Lenovo Vantage". Well my BIOS does not have that mode, so I looked for the settings program, supposedly available in the Windows store.
For some reason, I cannot find this software, so I called Lenovo support. Or I wanted to, but the Lenovo site is very well designed to hide their phone number. I guess that is because they don't really care about helping their customers. Anyway, I found their number by ducking it. (DuckDuckGo's verb) There are websites who catalog customer support numbers for companies that don't want to talk to you.
Well, long and short of it is, after talking with two inept Lenovo representatives, both who first told me the solution was to replace my keyboard at a repair centre, I did a BIOS flash to the latest version, which did not make the hotkey mode option appear, and I was told that there is nothing I can do to make this work because the laptop is out of warranty and their "Lenovo Settings" software won't work on it.
I thought at this point, if I really wanted to get this simple yet infuriating mode to be changed, I'd have to download a custom BIOS from a BIOS hacker community, hope that it gives me that option, and that it doesn't brick the laptop. But would you believe I didn't have to do that. I found a post on a StackExchange forum that says all you gotta do is press Fn+Esc!!!
Okay, so that is a major fail on the part of Lenovo phone support. And this toggle actually survives reboots too. Amazing.
I wanted to comment on that StackExchange post that it survives reboots, but while I do have a StackExchange account, I am not able to write the comment because I need a bunch of other members to think I am cool first. That is a piss-off because I want to help people to know that this answer works, and it works great. I understand that spam is a problem, but this is just insane. I can't even truly vote-up the answer because of the lack of "reputation" points.
In my experience with forums, the spammer is pretty easily caught after they make their first 2-3 posts, so having to earn that much respect can't be about spam. It seems like a bit of elitism or something. I mean, I could be over-reacting but I felt like being blocked from writing my comment would could help others was harmful to the community, and I that I was not valued enough to speak.
Unless the community would rather not have anybody from "outside" contribute, and just stick to those who have earned their way up the social ladder. Whatever. I'm not into being part of a clique. I will just treat those sites as references, and I won't contribute. Their loss.
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