I’m in the IT dept. Lots and lots of my end users called me for help over the years, only to find out that they had accidentally toggled airplane mode. I’m happier now that fewer laptops have hardware airplane mode switches or key combos.
It is also common to get calls where they had disabled the microphone or webcam via hardware privacy switches or shutters. Ugh.
I’m one who would demand the complete removal of any airplane mode key on the keyboard (I wouldn’t even want to have them change it to a key combo). It’s easy enough to use the OS to disable the wifi and bluetooth. Best part for me is that I can see, diagnose, and correct disabled wifi and bluetooth in the OS via remote support software, but I can’t easily deal with hardware or BIOS-based switches. In those cases, I have to talk the end user through it on the phone.
You’d be surprised–I’m in IT and I get at least two calls a year from an end user who accidentally hit the webcam/microphone privacy switch.
Usually it ends up being a huge kerfuffle too. They often discover their mistake when in “the most important Zoom meeting of the year!” and of course panic hard and call me frantically while the other Zoom participants wait impatiently. I think the social pressure of being put on the spot turns off their brains such that they can’t simply look up and see the indicator that the privacy switch is engaged.
I get why mfgs put the hardware privacy switches in, but it is really hard for us IT techs to talk the end users through diagnosing the issue when they’re panicking. If it’s software-only, what I can do is quickly remote into their machine and fix it for them, then verify everything’s working with the Zoom meeting. The end user feels better (since they can just sit back and leave it entirely up to us techs) and I get it fixed faster. I’d ban all hardware cut-off switches if I could, at least on our corporate computers.
Maybe read up on this before you ask as you are not the first and then direct such a request to any existing topic on QMK rather than expand yet another topic to have posts about such
So… I just need to let my cat know, that it’s her fault for pressing this button…
Seriously, it’s not about the existence of this button, it’s about making it configurable in a way, that it can be turned off. Like a lot of other manufacturers are doing it.
Besides that, this button is working, even if the laptop is locked. I wouldn’t have any issues, if this wouldn’t be the case, as I’m locking my laptop everytime I’m leaving it, because of my cats.
In that case, the proper place would be in EC firmware: add a BIOS option to disable airplane key entirely OR add a key-combo to prevent its accidental pressing, such as Ctrl-Airplane or Ctrl-Alt-Airplane (assuming F row is toggled so that key is not F10 at the time).
Somehow, though, I bet your cats would still manage to press Ctrl AND Airplane at the same time, so a complete disable option is probably better.
No. This is the appropriate thread to add yet another request for QMK on the FW13 because it shows yet another good reason to do it.
If I go add my voice to those other threads, it will be drowned out.
This Airplane key issue is a very legitimate reason to allow customization of the FW13 keyboard. It doesn’t even have to be QMK. It could be some other configurator.
The Airplane key issue is one reason I am not buying FW13s or recommending them as fleet laptops, even though they would make great fleet laptops due to parts interchangeability. The last thing I need is to increase the number of end user calls desperately wondering why they have no network access.
