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I’d like to announce a new Sammy in my life …… a white French spec NC10 has just arrived.
As a proud owner of a nice Blue UK edition – it was finally time to increase the size of our Sammy family. In fact as my wife kept taking ‘my’ one it will make things far simpler at home.
Why a French one ? Well, we are both British, but living in France …. and as my wife writes quite a lot of French emails etc she wanted a French keyboard (with the multitude of accented characters) to ease her task. She ordered one from French Amazon site – and it arrived the next day.
However …. she didn’t really want French Windows and application software … so my first job was to try and de-Frenchify it.
After a quick search through Google I quickly learned that XP does not simply allow you to change a language setting (even if there is an underlying default English)… you need to make a new install of the language that you need.
So armed with the original XP disc from my UK machine that is what I did …. with some trepidation. Having read some of the other threads (Windows 7, XP Pro, Linux etc) I was curious but not sure what to do … however as the machine had nothing on it I knew that as a last resort I could go back to the Samsung Recovery s/ware and still have a working machine.
So I deleted the original (still empty) D: partition, and recreated D: and E: partitions.
I then made a new install of XP (by sharing the DVD-drive from my desktop) on the the E: partition. This was straightforward enough and the XP install needed nothing apart from choosing the right options … basically English language but French keyboard.We now have a multi-lingual (dual-boot) Sammy.
Now that I have full ownership of the ‘old’ blue Sammy … and some increased confidence I will probably try and experiment with some of the other OS’s mentioned….. and CrytsalClear and RocketDock and …….
Mark, thanks for sharing that. It is of interest to me as my wife is French and also writes a lot of stuff in French. She currently knows all the ALT short cuts to all the special characters but you make me wonder how useful it would be to set up a French keyboard/laptop.
So I guess on a French keyboard you have all the accents accessible via shift or similar?
I keep meaning to ask her to help me sign up to Amazon.fr associate scheme and create a French NC10 landing page to try and capture a few Euros. Afterall, they are worth quite a lot to us in the UK now!
Did you know the Alt+Shift shortcut ? If you set up two keyboard configuration (french, english) you can swith between the two by using Alt+Shift.
Of course your keyboard its still the same 🙂 but it will act as a french one. You just have to now where are characters.
On a French keyboard accent are directly on the digit keys. No need to press shift (except if you want a digit).MarkR you are right, it’s difficult to change the language of XP, you need to install a new one. Sorry.
Jez – as 20Syl has said the accented characters are directly accessible on the individual keys. Some keys seem to have 4 different values.
Personally I found it a nightmare … as well as being AZERTY you have to shift for digits, even shift for a ‘full stop’ and the @ key is an AltGr and some other key combo.
Still it keeps my good lady happy – and I get to ‘muck around’ with the other one.
20Syl – yes I knew about the 2 keyboard config … but as my wife is not a touch typist and doesn’t know the French keyboard layout this wouldn’t work.
French keyboard is quite strange I agree. And for example i use a english layout for programming, it’s easier for a lot of characters and no need of é è à ô ö ë ê or Å“.
They’r is 3 solutions about layout issues :
1) Print a layout and keep it near the keayboard
2) Buy some little stickes (or made them) and stick it on the keys
3) ThatIt’s hard when you do not know a layout, but it’s quick to get used to it.
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