NWARG : Key Remap

Bill's Brand . . .

Bill Gates, not content with being the richest person on earth, decided he had to brand every keyboard like cattle with his precious Windows logo to feed his ego. As a rationalization for the ficticius need for this logo, the 'Windows' and 'App' keys were added to the keyboard. The computer industry being easily led, couldn't get into the stockade fast enough to get one.

Why it's bad for gaming . . .

Essentially, hitting the windows key will bring you out of fullscreen games. It also is a useless key. Then only time I've ever used it is to minimize all windows. Basically, it's a waste of space that can kick you out of a game if accidentally hit. It's also near commonly used keys, such as Alt and the Space Bar.

What to do about it . . .

What you can do about it is remap these keys to other more useful keys. Personally, I have the Right Windows and App keys remapped to Backspace and Delete. The utility I used to do this was Key Tweak. I do not use the WASD configuration. I write my config so that my left thumb sits on the Alt Key and use FGHJ for movement. Remapping the keys eliminates the possibility of hitting the Windows key and lets me use the thumb for several actions that it wouldn't if used on the spacebar. This also lets you type and use the thumb for deletion. Obvoiusly, the keyboard layout is different on different models. If you have left and right alts on the side of your spacebar, remapping the win keys to alt and delete keys to the win keys may be a better solution to you.

This is the registry key that KeyTweak generated on my system. It works fine on my XP system, but you use it at your own risk.

Registry File

Last Modified: April 28th, 2008