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I think the article should be expanded to include both general information for someone just looking it up, and a separate section about how it has come to become a joke referring to newbies. In my opinion, the goal of the article should be to elucidate rather than make fun of a user who may have
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The text says, "New users were typically confused by this reference to the 'Any Key' and began wondering where the 'any' key was on the keyboard. The confusion is much less common now as some computer help systems have added explicit explanations of this problem." It makes it sound like almost
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A cool key that doesn't also work for the any key is the FN key, dunno why but messing around on the title screen of
Danganronpa v3 I pressed fn and it just didn't register, unlike all the other keys including the Windows key.
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As for "On some models, if the keyboard is unplugged, the command prompt that appears is "Keyboard not detected. Press any key to continue."? Dunno about that one, usually the 'you have no keyboard' message is generated by the
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For example, noting that the "any key" is not a real key on the keyboard would be of real use to a new computer user looking it up in the
Knowledge (XXG). The fact that it is also a joke deserves it's own section, perhaps.
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How often does the "any key" phrase come up these days? Not very often, because most OSes use mice and it's almost always something like "click OK to continue" or "click anywhere". So I think this is a moot
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messages. Often, software designed to allow BBS messages to be composed offline would allow the user to automatically add a silly one-liner to the end of each message sent. Mid 1990's at the latest, I'd
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Microsoft Flight
Simulator 2020, Dying Light 2, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Lego Marvel Superheroes... etc. All feature a "press any key" prompt at the start. It's not historical, it's still common.
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confused by this. Once you have a million computer users there might have been a few thousand who were confused (which is enough to justify a help system entry) but it shouldn't be so overstated.
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547:. So don't think you could just jump out of your confusion, having no more seeds for your random key generator and choose the very first lower-left key hoping for success - you will fail ;-) --
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467:"Hi, my name is Annie Key. Please don't hit me!" -- I don't know if this belongs in the article, but I think it's funny, which probably says a lot about me, but what the heck. :) --
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personally known anyone who actually looked for the "any key". It appears to me that
Knowledge (XXG) is, in this case, vectoring an unsubstantiated urban legend.
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not all of the keys on the keyboard work when prompted for the 'any key' imput, notably the 'Esc' cey, testing should be done and non working keys stated.
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Should probably be noted that some software switched to "press a key to continue", for the people who don't know what the term "any" means.
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Agreed, the article makes it sound like there was widespread confusion. I've been working on computers since the early 80s and have
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Why is the any key being regarded as historical? As far as I can tell it's still used, for example in computer game splash screens
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Well... in most cases. As I had experienced in most of the DOS and *NIX versions, in most cases, typical applications ignore a
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everyone was confused by "press any key", when in reality, I would guess that the vast majority of people were
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I did a little bit of cleanup of this article and sort of improved the prose. Any ideas on how to expand? —
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key on the keyboard (even the modifier keys), the left mouse button, and the joystick fire button all work.
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as "Keyboard error. Press F1 to continue." (the tagline joke for this being "Think F1 to continue...") --
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on
Knowledge (XXG). If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
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OK, I merged based on this discussion. I'm new here, so the result might deserve a second look.
244:, I can see where there could be a difference between the entry written from two perspectives.
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Yes, which is why most users probably weren't confused about whether there was an "Any Key".
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whoops it was already in the article *better read it entirely first* ^^ --
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Some
Samsung DVD remotes have a key called Any Key which opens a menu.
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Wouldn't it be "Press the Any Key" if it were one specific key?
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Any key is not a valid term... Ctrl is being ignored always
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Know how I can tell you've never worked in tech support?
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Start-Class
Computer hardware articles of Low-importance
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119:, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
302:show you the next page: the right mouse button.
744:Start-Class software articles of Low-importance
292:"Press just about anything for the next page"
255:Any dicussion on the topic would be welcome.
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30:on 16 February 2009 (UTC). The result of
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298:thing you can press that does
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144:Template:WikiProject Computing
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734:Start-Class software articles
601:17:33, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
207:This article is supported by
183:This article is supported by
135:and see a list of open tasks.
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286:In the Amiga Tetris clone
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60:on Knowledge (XXG)'s
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58:Start-class
718:Categories
260:Abqwildcat
288:Defektris
138:Computing
125:computing
121:computers
87:Computing
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92:Software
28:deletion
578:Qorilla
545:Any-Key
485:-style
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479:tagline
165:on the
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350:(Talk)
267:point.
242:myself
127:, and
64:scale.
380:never
335:Ilyan
304:Every
279:Jimsg
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