Thinkpads Forum

My wife's T520 that I bought from a forum member has always seemed to suffer from dropping keypresses quite frequently - maybe one character per sentence. My wife has told me the problem has been getting worse, so I sat down to examine the problem. However, now I can't seem to reproduce it at all.

I am sitting here typing, going absolutely crazy. Just thought I would let you all know. Actually, my impression is that maybe the issue is to do with key separation and travel depth. There seems to be less separation between keys compared with my T30 and T60, and sort of a no man's land between keys, where you can hit the keyboard without registering any key at all. Reduced key travel may be resulting in less tactile feedback - less certainty that a key has been hit.

I also wonder whether the Trackpoint might be picking up some vibration, or even direct hits, resulting in scrolling activation or mouse skipping, so I am experimenting with leaving the Trackpoint disabled. Judging by this post, there isn't really much wrong with the keyboard. Confused!

I am a lousy typist anyway, so I don't necessarily understand the niceties of keyboard design or performance. Any experiences out there? Could it be a software problem? My wife tends to use Thunderbird quite a lot for her email - could that have an issue?

Try giving the keyboard to good blow through with compressed air, be sure to get plenty of air under the keys.
Maybe a few hairs have made their way in there, and are interfering with the scissor mechanism of the keys.

Do you have the touchpad enabled? that tends to cause the mouse problems you describe.

I have noticed that my wife & I exert different pressures and finger angles on the keyboard. We have gone through similar issues. Keyboard "feel" can be very subjective from one person to another. I have a much heavier hand than my wife does. There can also be different "feels" between manufacturers.

Just a thought.

At my previous job, we had a thinkpad with this same issue with dropped key presses. I ordered a new keyboard for it, and when I went to install it, I noticed that the ribbon cable on the original keyboard was pinched. I used some scotch tape to prevent it from getting pinched again while sliding the keyboard back in. The original keyboard worked great from then on.

Might be worth checking out to see if it's the same issue.