So, I bought a simple USB switch, plugged the Mac keyboard into the input and the Mac and laptop into the outputs. I press 2 buttons (one on the monitor and one on the USB switch), I can switch between Mac and PC very quickly!
That left me with my next problem, and the reason for this post. While the Mac keyboard can map to all main Windows keys, I was not happy with the default mapping. Take a look at standard Mac and PC keyboards:
The Mac keyboard puts the Alt key right next to the Control key, but a Windows keyboard puts the Windows key (opens the Start menu) between Control and Alt. I'm not really a touch-typist, but this throws me off something fierce. So, I start looking at ways to re-map keys in Windows, and the easiest way I found was KeyTweak. Here's a screenshot (click to see the full-size image):
I won't try to explain all of KeyTweak's features here, but it's pretty easy to re-map "normal" keys like Alt and Windows just using the GUI. If you have both keyboards available (as I did by using the laptop's keyboard), you can also use a "teach" mode to re-map some of the harder keys, like Volume Up/Down, Mute, and PrintScreen (one of my favorite keys - use Alt-PrintScreen to take a screenshot of the active window and store it in Windows' clipboard).
My exact setup is shown in this "raw map" view:
Feel free to download my Mac keyboard mapping for KeyTweak to use as-is or as a starting point for your own custom mapping.
P.S. If you're looking for the opposite functionality, MacWorld has a nice article on using a Windows keyboard with a Mac or you can try DoubleCommand.
6 comments:
So why not get a dual core Mac and run both PC's and Windows. But then again...I suppose you'd have the same problem.
Running Windows through something like Boot Camp, VMWare, or Parallels isn't something I can do on my PowerPC G4 Mac, but is apparently easy to do with an Intel-based Mac.
But the same issues do apply - you'll have the Alt key sitting between the Control and Windows keys if you don't re-map your keyboard. It might not affect a casual Windows user, but if you're used to pressing normal shortcuts like Win-D (Show Desktop), Alt-Space-N (Minimize Window), Alt-Enter (Properties), etc, it's really confusing to not have the Alt & Windows keys in their "proper" places.
I just tried my mac keyboard on my laptop PC and it works fine, but I'm having to use trial and error to figure out the special combinations. I haven't found any more than your notes from April - seems no one else has worked on this problem. What specificially has thrown me for a loop is toggling insert and overwrite - what key does that??? Any other special combos anyone could pass along??? JimB
I don't really use the Insert key to toggle insert/overwrite mode (except by mistake!), so I hadn't thought about mapping it.
I opened up KeyTweak and pressed the Full Teach Mode. Then, I pressed the Insert key on my laptop's keyboard followed by the Help key on my Mac's keyboard. They both mapped to scancode 57426, which means the keys will be interpreted exactly the same.
Sure enough, I tried it out, and it works for me! Try using your Mac keyboard's Help key. Does that toggle insert/overwrite for you?
THIS is just what I need!!!!!
Hey, glad this is still useful for folks! I still use this setup everyday, using my Mac keyboard w/ a USB switcher to toggle between my Mac and my docked Windows laptop.
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