Doing something with the numeric keypad

Question

I, like most people, don't use the numeric keypad on my keyboard much and they seem to me to be a complete waste of otherwise perfectly good eighteen keys.

I was wondering if there was something cool that could be done with them - I've heard of some people controlling their mouse pointer using the 2, 4, 6 and 8 keys, but that does seem very practical to me.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Low tech solution:

Remove the keys (easy with a pencil) so the key won't exceed the border, then you could glue a piece of wood over it and get a cup holder.

Answer 2

I use my keypad keys for adding, subtracting, multiplication, division, numerical data entry, etc. Now I'm going to use my CTRL, SHIFT, and W keys together to try and figure out what this has to do with programming...

Answer 3

Why not create a custom keyboard layout?
Real languages often have special characters you could put there.
Alternately if you use APL you could put their 'unique' characters in there.

Answer 4

Try using AutoHotKey http://www.autohotkey.com/, and setting up some hotkeys for common tasks that you perform, for example:

• Opening my computer
• Opening your data folders
• Opening web browser
• Copying as plain text
• Sleeping the computer
• Etc.