TheLostSwede
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I don't actually live "up in the north", but ok.Still, localization is important. Few years ago manufacturers/brands paid more attention for such things. Now they only pay attention for their own profit. Today I can find a very few laptops with proper (localized) key mapping and the same thing goes for backlit PC keyboards. What overwhelming majority of manufacturers/brands do today is an perfect example of an extremely rude business practice and total disrespect for the customers and I'm not OK with that. If you up there in the north are used to that - well... shame on you.
Second, it's not exactly a small market. Combined population of Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Montenegro is over 21 million if we don't count 5+ million who work abroad - that's for the ŠĐČĆŽ letters. We also use QWERTZ layout which is the most common in the EU, so it really pisses me off when I see QWERTY laptops or keyboards over here.
The thing is that localization doesn't cost much, but manufacturers/brands are so cheap that they remind me of some car manufacturer (I think it was Ford) where they refused to correct a serious safety mistake for as little as 1$ per vehicle and rather decided to pay-out to victims who had a car accident with their cars. I read somewhere about that story long time ago, so I don't remember the exact details. The conclusion is the same - profit, profit and profit. Customers? Sc**w the customers!
For example this is a properly localized backlit laptop keyboard suitable for Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Montenegro (old photo, my Dell laptop) - it doesn't have numpad, but that's of far less importance on a 15.6" laptop:
View attachment 142551
21 million is a tiny, tiny, tiny market, just like the Nordics or the little island I live on now where a lot of these things are still made, or at least where the makers HQ's are based.
Any market under 100 million is tiny, sorry to burst your bubble, but that's how these companies think.
I doubt most of the laptop makers sell more than a 10 or 20,000 notebooks of each model in your market, so it's simply not worth the investment to them, right or wrong.
In fact, I've been having a look at getting a new laptop and here you only get US ANSI layout with additional characters for the locals and I don't want that, so I've had a look back home, which is a market with rather high buying power, yet it seems to be a very poor selection of available notebooks and part of that is likely down to customization, as these companies don't want to offer too many SKUs, as it just adds cost to them. It's the same situation most model aren't likely to sell more than 10 or 20k units.
QWERTY is by far the most common layout in the EU, again, don't confuse ANSI with ISO layout. Please see attached map.
Green is QWERTY
Orange is QWERTZ
Blue is AZERTY
Yellow is special stuff and Grey is non latin.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTZ and you can compare with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY
Are you in the computer manufacturing industry? I don't think so from you lack of knowledge. I am and I happened to meet up with the founder of Wooting, which is a keyboard company and had a chat with him about keyboards. Turns out, it's really quite expensive to make keyboard key caps if you want something that isn't standardised. Also, injection moulds for plastic costs quite a bit. Based on projects I've worked on, a mould for a full set of keys for a keyboard, at least if you're talking the kind that is used with back-lit keys, you're looking at something like US$40-50,000. Obviously you make a mould so you can make the extra keys for additional languages, but if you look at the Wikipedia links above, you'll soon see that there's an insane amount of variations on some of the keys on a keyboard, so at some point the devices makers are going to have to make a trade-off, regardless of how it makes us consumers feel. This is why I'm using a "Nordic" keyboard, rather than a Swedish one.
Technically, we both have the same problems, our languages have letters that aren't easily typeable without a customised keyboard. However, this means that we're also going to have to live with the fact that there's either a reduced range of products available, or we're going to have to suffer with a different keyboard layout. I can in fact type just fine on a British ISO keyboard, I just need to remember that I've switched language on and that some things are located in a different position. For example, the brackets () are shifted one key to the right using a British keyboard. Not sure if the same would be true for you using, say a German or Polish keyboard.
Back in the days when I worked as a tech journalist in the UK, someone at the Register went to CES and used one of the computers in the press centre to write an article. He was a touch typist and didn't notice he was using a QWERTZ keyboard, rather than a QWERTY keyboard, so all his Y's were Z's in the story, which he somehow didn't even read through before sending off for publishing. His editor thought it was so funny that they published the story as he'd written it...
I guess this is way off topic now and I'm not sure it's the biggest issue with modern laptops, but yes, it can be really frustrating to use a computer with a keyboard layout you don't like. I have similar feelings for ANSI keyboards, as I can't type Swedish on those in a sensible way, as ANSI keyboards are a couple of keys short compared to ISO keyboards, which makes it impossible to figure out how to type certain things.
Oh and be glad you don't write traditional Chinese.