External Keyboard on a laptop

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Roy Mustang, Nov 21, 2006.

  1. Roy Mustang

    Roy Mustang Private E-2

    Hi everyone. Recently my boss gave me a laptop he had. The monitor on the laptop is broken but otherwise the system runs fine. I wanted to give it to my mom for her home office because her old system(it was probably a P1) died. I already hooked the system up to her monitor and everything works fine. The only problem is that the laptop keyboard is a little too small for her. I am going to purchase a desktop keyboard and have her use that. My question is, do I need to disable the laptop keyboard or not? Will I need to do anything special to get the external keyboard to work or will it just run with two keyboards? I should mention just in case, that I do not have a docking station. I have the monitor and mouse and printer plugged directly into the back of the laptop.

    The laptop has Windows XP with 384K of ram. It's a few years old but I believe it is a P3 at the very least(Don't have it with me).
     
  2. bigbazza

    bigbazza R.I.P. 14/12/2011 - Good Onya Geek

    I run an external keyboard on my laptop most of the time. Although I use a docking station, it should also work without one. Do you a spare USB port or a PS/2 port?

    Make sure whatever keyboard you purchase fits the relevant spare port on your laptop.
    I'm sure you know that, just thought I'd mention it. ;)

    In my case, both keyboards are still active, I just use the external one, though.

    It puts you further away from the ecreen and is more comfortable from the ergonomic, and visual, points of view.

    I'll test mine without the docking station later, but as I run my laptop without the battery installed if I try to disconnect my docking station all power will cease immediately. :p Bazza

    ===

     
  3. rik_na

    rik_na Sergeant

    Yeah ditto. I use a ps/2 keyboard in the portable [no docking station]. The portable keyboard works too, which is fine. I also sometimes use a ir ps/2 keyboard in same.


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