Thinkpads Forum

We all love our keyboards, which is why we love our Thinkpads.

However my down arrow key (used frequently for web scrolling) has suddenly become soft...not non-functional...just lacking the solid, springy kickback of the other keys.

Is this fixable, short of a keyboard swap?

By the way, here's to Bill Morrow, who invisibly guides and administers one of the best forums on the entire Internet!

Under the key is what looks like a halfround silicon ball.
Search for "IBM T60 key" (or whatever your model) on eBay.
Not keyboard!
Check out the various sellers, they have pictures of individual key parts (3 types: Alps, Chicony and NMB, they call them type 1, 2 or 3 or something. Compare with what your own keyboard has, and order the individual complete key.

It could be broken or maybe there is just something stuck under it. Remove the key carefully and take a look.

As an alternative to buying one key that may not even fix the problem if your keyboard was that heavily used, you might consider a complete keyboard, if you get one from the same manufacturer you could use either for parts to service the other. A fully working keyboard would be about $10 to $20 plus the cost of postage, that's pretty cheap by most standards and there are many sellers here that could provide one, including myself.

No. The keyboard and T60P have not had hard use. Only the down arrow key suffers from web page scrollitis.

taichi wrote:No. The keyboard and T60P have not had hard use. Only the down arrow key suffers from web page scrollitis.

That's why you use the middle button on the trackpoint

Kasm279 wrote:...
That's why you use the middle button on the trackpoint

Well, whaddya know!

Thanks