Don’t Silence my On-Screen Keyboard Microsoft

Like most of you, I was anxious to download and install the latest Windows 8 update (what I refer to as Win8.1.1) on all of my devices Wednesday night. The first thing I noticed after updating my Note 8 tablet was when entering my PIN to unlock the device, there was not sound. You know, that familiar click, click sound as you type. After unlocking, I checked volume which was at 60%. I also checked my Settings to make sure that; “PC and Devices > Typing>Play key sounds as I type”, was turned on, and it was. I even checked Ease of Access in case Microsoft had added some new function. Everything was as it should be. I turned the volume up to 100 and tried the on-screen keyboard again. I could hear a very faint click if I put my ear close to the screen. WTH. At 50, my normal volume setting, I couldn’t hear a thing.

Yesterday I decided to update my Acer W3 tablet (which I plan to reset next week when I prep it for sale). Before I updated though, I set the volume to 50 and made sure I could clearly hear the on-screen keyboard taps. All was good. After the update; silence, again. I verified this on my Yoga Pro last night. The Yoga has much better speakers, so at 50 you can hear the keyboard faintly and at 100 the keyboard sounds normal. But at 100 I could fill an entire room with loud music.

As this has been verified on three different touch devices, it’s no doubt a result of a change Microsoft made with this most recent update. Why? Was it the result of some small focus group, where a few users did not like hearing the keyboard make sounds? Well Mr. Easily Irritated, why don’t you just set that slider control to off, and shut the hell up! I don’t know how or why Microsoft makes these kinds of decisions. But when they do, maybe they should give it a little more thought. Would it have been that hard to replace the on/off keyboard sound slider with maybe a 0 to 5 scale. With 0 being off and 5 being what we have all gotten used to. I don’t think so.

I may be in the minority here. Just like the OneDrive setting which Microsoft again changed to, “Save to OneDrive by default”, after this update. But since when do minorities “not” have a voice. There are dozens of settings in Windows 8 that I have absolutely no interest in and will never use. But I don’t complain about them or wish Microsoft would remove them. I ignore them. So focus group, please stay TF away from my clickety, click keyboard. I like it, and I want it back. That is all.