WEBVTT

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thanks for watching Techquickie click the subscribe button and enable

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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos you know

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how when you use a keyboard for a long time the letters wear off or you get a

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layer of finger dirt so deep you have to physically scrape your keys well if this

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has ever happened to you and you don't have to admit it I'm sure that what

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you've noticed is that it mostly affects the keys that you're pressing down all

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the time like Eeyore enter so I'd be

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willing to bet that for most of you one key that's remained more or less

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pristine is scroll lock

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but what the heck is scroll lock anyway

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is it something people use to keep their documents secure before books were

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invented sorry for that anyway we don't need to

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go quite that far back for our answer but the scroll lock does hail from a

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bygone era of computing these days if

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you were working on a document for example you would generally reposition

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the typing cursor by moving your mouse and roll the wheel to scroll up and down

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the page but back before graphical

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operating systems and mice were widespread people used the arrow keys on

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their keyboards to move their cursors around or to scroll the page so the

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scroll locks purpose was to toggle their arrow keys between scrolling when it was

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on and just moving the cursor around when it was off so then is scroll lock

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still relevant in the era of mice and fancy gooeys while many people and

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keyboard manufacturers are clearly saying no it's not uncommon to find

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keyboards without the scroll lock key but that doesn't mean that it's totally

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useless some modern programs notably

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Microsoft Excel still use the scroll

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lock key as it was originally intended turn it off and the arrow keys will

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highlight an adjacent cell but turn it on and they will scroll through the

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entire worksheet which can actually be handy if you're working on a laptop and

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your trackpad is terrible there's also a little-known Windows feature that makes

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use of scroll lock if you modify the registry with this key then hold right

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control and press scroll lock twice you'll get the blue screen of death cool

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right now I'm serious this feature is included to give advanced users the

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ability to look at the contents of the system's memory which are dumped to a

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log file when a blue screen crash occurs finally if you've got several computers

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hooked up to a KVM like in the server room here at Linus Media Group pressing

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scroll lock twice then a number key will actually switch the input on most of

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these types of devices however as you've

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probably noticed all of these use cases

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are fringe at best so these days the

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most common use of the scroll lock is simply as a free key that can be

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remapped for any number of other purposes some people use it to trigger a

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macro or some other special function during gameplay while others use special

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hotkey software that can repurpose scroll lock as a toggle between two

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different virtual keyboards so if you were looking for a way to finally

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achieve your life's goal of having a dedicated wingdings keyboard without

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missing out on desk space for your regular one this could be the answer or

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maybe an alternate Cyrillic or Mandarin

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layout would make more sense there's a ton of different reasons you might want

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multiple computers maybe use one as a as a coding workstation and the other one

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for gaming for example but no one likes having two keyboards and two mice on the

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desk it's confusing and it's cluttered well synergy solves that problem at once

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and for all letting you use a single keyboard and mouse across multiple

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computers even if they have different operating systems all together it works

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on Windows Mac and Linux and has great

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features including clipboard sharing dragging and dropping files between the

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computers custom hotkeys and more

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synergy is available in basic and pro versions with the latter including s

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cell encryption to secure the data sent between the computers and synergy is

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offering a 50% discount to Techquickie viewers all you got to do is check out

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the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you dislike

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order