Help. My laptop's broken.

(As you read this, keep in mind that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee of the I.T. department.)

Cell phone rang at 9:45pm. It’s one of our salesmen. He’s on the road, prepping for a demo tomorrow morning. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

“When I press my ‘k’ key, the number ‘2’ shows up.”

Easy enough – his numlock is on. Only he doesn’t know how to turn it off. And I’m sitting at a ThinkPad, which actually labels the NumLock “NumLock” (go figure).

How to walk someone through this? He can’t see what I’m telling him to look for – and he’s more than a bit panicked that his computer is “broken”.

Answer? Google images. Search for “Gateway Solo laptop keyboard“, follow the first link. A little blurry, but enough to tell me that he should probably be looking at his function keys. (Turns out that Gateway in its infinite wisdom calls it “Pad Lock “.)

Now why was he calling me? Well, when you work for a software company and the developers think you’re the geek, you’re bound to get calls from the sales guys.

It could’ve been worse. 24 could have been on tonight.