Have You Got Something To Prise This Key Out With?

I have just hit the damned 'insert' button again.

The problem is that, being located right next to the 'delete' button it is a key that can be pressed without you knowing. But you certainly know that something just happened because all of a sudden everytime you type a character it deletes the one in front of it. Not being a touch typist, I tend to look at the keyboard rather than the screen which means that this little monster can cut vast swathes through my carefully crafted prose before I realise what is going on. I don't do it very often so, every time that it rears its ugly head I forget which button I am supposed to press to cure it and I am reduced to trying to Google it. Which is when the word 'overwrite' would be useful if it came to mind - but it never does.

So what is the 'insert' button for, and why is it in such a stupid place? Heaven alone knows. The answer is presumably the same for the question; what is a 'caps lock' for in this day and age and why did some idiot put it next to the 'a'?

Accepting that there are a lot of keyboards out there, and there may be someone who finds these things useful, it is doubtful that we will ever be rid of them, but is it really beyond the wit of man to come up with a bit of 'keyboard management' software that allows people like me to turn these irritating keys off?

There is, actually, a method being peddled that involves 'adding some keyboard scancode mapping information to your Windows registry' Unfortunately even the description lost me at the word 'adding' so the chances of me succesfully disabling these keys without disabling the whole computer are slim to nill. The other technique often ventured is 'prising the offending keys out' - nice.

While Microsoft spend all their time messing up user interfaces why don't they divert some of that creative energy into something really useful like an idiot proof way of customising the keyboard? Something with a nice friendly graphic interface maybe? They're probably still trying to figure out why the letters keep disappearing while they type.