So I was a little annoyed my first few days at work when I had to carefully read everything I had typed up to check and see if the 'Zs' and 'Ys' were in inappropriate places. Then I told myself to suck it up and deal with it..."this is Switzerland and if you can't accept their keyboards then sod off", I said.

This morning I was provided a password for my network drive from the IT department. I could be upset about my password, which consists of a guess at my nationality based on my skin colour, and since I just arrived from america it contains a DOLLAR SIGN and some other characters (umlauts etc...) and numbers.

A DOLLAR SIGN???? I couldn't figure out where the dollar sign was, because some keys have 3 symbols on them. Really, the QWERTZ thingy was enough, but 3 symbols on one key is a bit much, and now I've been told I must use this ingenious 'Alt Gr' to access some of the characters that are part of my password.

I can't figure how I'm going to access my network drive from home, since I have a US Keyboard on my laptop (I recall vaguely holding down some keys and entering a number combination to get the accentuated Spanish characters a few years ago). I had fun trying to figure out how to get to the @ sign to send my first e-mail at work...but now I think the IT Department is just havin' a laff

2 thoughts - if you are a good typist i.e. don't look at the keys when typing you can change the keyboard settings on the computer to QWERTY (US or UK, whichever you are used to).

Alternatively you can beg/borrow/buy a keyboard from home and plug it in/change the settings as above.

These aren't so great if you need all the umlauts etc

I have a QWERTY keyboard for my PC which cost me abot 6 quid. Go nuts!

However my Blackberry has a QWERTZ which is also fine. You're right though, I couldn't be doing with the ALT Gr key.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0009VTEX...SIN=B0009VTEXE

I use a QWERTZ keyboard 90% of the time.

I hate the US keyboards. If I have to use an English keyboard, would choose a UK one.

you have 2 choices, buy a US/UK keyboard for every machine you will sue, or get used to the Swiss keyboard. btw the Swiss-german is different to the Swiss-french etc...

Open a notepad and try the 'special' characters out.

I would also suggest changing passwords to avoid using characters that change due to the keyboard version.

Change your passwords and integrate into society?

I remember your introduction the other day. Funny that your first complaint came so soon....but I totally feel you on the keyboard.

QWERTZ doesn't bother me too much, but trying to adjust to the French AZERTY keyboard nearly broke me. In the end, I purchased a Canadian French keyboard (QWERTY layout, but with all the accent keys handy). Perfect solution.

Tried to find one for my new laptop without success.

Your company sucks, mine has English keyboards LOL just kidding
Really it is just getting used to it PLUS I am guessing (and hoping) you can change your password?

Cheers!

You'll get used to it and eventually you'll see there are advantages to having access to the üèéöäà keys.

Biggest change was just the Z/Y position but, zou'll get used it as thez saz around here

And yeah, it took a while to learn about @ - the first few weeks I had to cut and paste from other email addresses until someone put me out of my misery

EDIT: I'll add that switching between US/UK/Swiss German keyboards is not a biggie - but the French keyboard - how can I put this mildly - it's just foreign...

I'm so used to my Swiss German keyboard now that I had a rough time using my brother's computer when I visited him in November.

I think I'd go nuts trying to go back and forth between the different layouts on a day to day basis... to save your sanity, I really think you should use the same layout on all of your computers.

interestingly enough, I had the same grouch as you when I first arrived, including password issues.

ask the IT bods if you can have your password changed to something self defined, will probably cost you a coffee & gipfeli.

after a month or so, I got used to the German keyboard & like the fact that I have a bunch of extra "functionality" ... had to use my brothers laptop recently & was all at sea with a traditional British QWERTY .....

Zou are verz welcome to Yurich and Swityerland

I use little cut up post-it notes to fix my qwertz keyboard. I'm happy to use the qwertz at home, but it's too much of a pain for work. all the characters I use every day require finger gymnastics.

If you'd like to stay with using your Qwerty keyboard, just hold down the "Windows" key and press the "R" key.

This will bring up the "Run" command. Type in "charmap" without the quote marks and press "enter". this will bring up a list of available symbols and letters etc.. plus their keystroke combinations.

HTH
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10 bucks and get yourself a us or uk keyboard.

Or map your current one to us or uk. Although that isn't ideal as the physical key placements are different for non-alphabetic characters.

Wait till you get totally used to the QWERTZ keyboard, and then later have to use a QWERTY keyboard again - hahahaha!

It's really quite funny.

I have one machine at home that somehow I have a UK keyboard but set to Swiss. As I mainly don't need to look at the keys it's not a big issue, but should switch to one of the many Swiss keyboards I have kicking around.

I found it tough to get used to while learning German, but this QWERTZ keyboard is now my default. My wife switches between French, German and US keyboards, and I think that's crazy.

When you see multiple characters just hit many buttons at once and you will get it eventually. Shift, alt, ctrl (or up arrow, alt, strg) are your friends. Strg + alt + q is the @ symbol. (took me months to get that)

When all else fails...hit Alt + f4 and grab a beer.

come on, it's just a keyboard.

next thing you'll be complaining about is the mac Swiss-German keyboard has the @ sign in a different place to the PC one......

The joy of typing a password on multi-layout keyboard is simple.....type the character you think should be displayed into the username field to ensure it is mapped correctly.

Oh and if it bothers you so much, buy yourself a keyboard

I have two Dell Mini9s at home with UK keyboard but it doesn't take much to switch

Hey. at least it's not a French - French keyboard... I mean, someone must have thought that it'd be great joke to just scramble ALL the letters around, require holding down shift to type a number, and... oh dear. A terrible keyboard, the worst from any country or language I have ever seen.

No wonder even some of my French friends go around buying Swiss - French keyboards instead.