For $20, I'll take a letter

by Robert McMillan

December 27, 2004 —

I will pay you US$20 for a D. Because of Gigi.

To be perfectly honest, I'd buy just about any letter from you, just so long as it replaced the slanted and woefully unclickable mockery of a key that lies between the "S" and the "F" on my Sony notebook.

Gigi, my 11-month-old daughter, hobbled the Vaio. For the first few months of her life, I could seat her on my lap and quickly dash off an e-mail or respond to an instant message without much trouble. It was actually kind of fun. I convinced myself that daddy's work was somehow interesting to her newborn eyes and that the quiet look on her face was one of fascination.

In fact, she was scheming. Then, in October, the moment of truth: a lunge, a father's shriek and little plastic keys and hinges all over the desk and floor.

I should have known better. The baby books I had been reading universally advised me that the best baby toys feature straight lines, and high contrast, black-and-white patterns. Sound like a keyboard to you? In fact, we are apparently hard-wired to love gadgets. Toymakers understand this, and they now sell baby cell phones, baby remote controls and, yes, even a baby laptop. If I had been smart, I would have set her down in front of that rather than my own notebook.

Instead, I ended up snapping one of those tiny plastic key hinges trying to put the "D" back on the Vaio, and soon found myself immersed in the dark world of notebook keyboard replacement parts.

My first stop was Sony Corp. Web site. It's a great place to go if you want to buy a brand new computer, but if you want a tiny piece of plastic to put beneath the letter "D"? Forget about it.

I then hit Google, and suddenly no longer felt alone. There were other parents on discussion boards with the same problem. I may not have been alone, but what I heard does not make me feel good. Some of these parents were spending hundreds of dollars on new keyboards. While it's easy to buy a new battery or even a whole new keyboard online, there apparently isn't much profit in selling the letter "D."

Then came the flash of inspiration: eBay! Of course. Within minutes, I was introduced to Easton Shakespeare. An eBay Inc. seller based in Lithonia, Georgia, he bills himself as the top source for notebook keys on the Internet. He sells about 10 keys a day, prying "D's" and "F's" and "Q's" from almost every major notebook and mailing them out to desperate people like me all around the world. Cats are another fierce enemy of the keyboard, he tells me, when I e-mail him to ask about the business.

Easton seems to understand the importance of his work, which he says is "rewarding in more ways than money." He got into the alphabet game about two years ago, after working in tech support at Gateway Inc. "If a customer wanted to replace a key on their notebook, I would have to charge them $280 to ship the system off to Gateway's Texas repair site," he says. His price for my letter "D"? $4.50.

The hassle of fixing up a notebook is one of the nastier surprises awaiting consumers who make the move from desktop to notebook computers, says Sam Bhavnani, a mobile computing analyst with the Current Analysis Inc. research firm. "People are traditionally very scared to go into their notebook, so it's not that common for people to add a new hard drive or update their RAM," he says. "A notebook isn't as easily upgradeable as a desktop, and it probably never will be."

The Gigis of the world may keep people like Easton in business, but Bhavnani assures me that notebook makers are not likely to begin selling individual keys anytime soon.

Still, I have a suggestion that I hope they may take to heart. Why not include an extra couple of keys with every notebook sold? If shirt-makers can throw in extra buttons, and cabinet makers extra screws, would it really be so hard? And Sony, if you're reading this, take my advice and make it the letter "D."

IDG News Service