QWERTY / QWERTZ / AZERTY Keyboards

[Liam Downey]

I've been looking for a new laptop for a while and found an MSI notebook, in Germany, that's within my budget (€800). The only thing, which I found out at the last minute, was that it has a QWERTZ keyboard. I'd never heard of this before, so I done some 'checking out' on Google. Well, at first I thought that it was just a couple of letters that were swapped about (thinking that with a screwdriver I could pop the keys and swap them back) but alas, this was not to be. Seems that the whole layout (symbols etc.) is set differently. I also found that there's a French keyboard with an 'AZERTY' layout too. I'd not heard of this before. I thought all keyboards had the QWERTY layout. Anyway, because I'll be buying a laptop without an operating system (I'll install W7 myself) the localization shouldn't matter.
I wanted to know if it's going to be much of a setback with this keyboard layout? (aside from the obvious, letters re-arranged). Also, because it's a gaming laptop, would the gaming keys be different too? (It has a Steelseries keyboard).
Thanks

 

[No2rdame]

I do a lot of typing, so not having a standard keyboard would be a huge issue with me. In addition, since both of these languages have characters that are not found in English, you could end up with some funky keys that you'll never use but will throw the layoff out completely. If I were you I'd research online and look at ebay, Amazon, or something similar to see if someone sells replacement keyboards for that particular model that are in QWERTY format. If you're comfortable taking the laptop apart to do the keyboard replacement that could solve your issue.