AZERTY keyboard with Windows (US ver.)

[BarryS]

My apology for the dumb question, but I have an Exchange Student from France staying with my family and it never even dawned on me that the French keyboard layout (AZERTY) is different from our own (QWERTY). Will an AZERTY keyboard work okay with my US version of Windows 2000 SP4?

I've found in the Control Panel where I can switch between French (France) and the English (US) layouts using my existing keyboard, but I just wanted to make things a little easier during the transition of visiting the US and install an AZERTY keyboard. Our student is here to work on her speaking skills and not her typing skills. The PC I've set up is for her use only, so I'm not concerned about having to remember which keys are switched in the event I would need to use her PC.

Thanks

[Peter M]

Yes it will. Install an alternate keyboard layout (using the control panel, regional and language settings IIRC). That'll allow switching back and forth keyboard layouts.

You don't even need to install a physically different keyboard, as long as the visitor has her touch typing skills sorted. If it's hunt and peck, she'll be confused.

The only pitfall here is that US keyboards have one key missing (when compared to "international" layouts) - so if you switch to a non-US layout, there will always be /something/ you can't type. For example, German layout loses <>| on a US keyboard, which is rather annoying.

[BarryS]

Thank you for the response. Looking at getting an AZERTY keyboard on Ebay.