Mac Tip: Virtual Keyboard
I'm an avid coffee drinker and mother of twins. This spells inevitable disaster. About a year ago, my husband upgraded to a Macbook Pro (the subject of my previous post). He gave me his perfectly good, but underpowered for his needs, Macbook. I had a Windows laptop at the time, but knew it was on its last legs. After only using it for a week, my twins knocked my coffee over the keyboard. Not knowing any better, I dried it as best I could and kept using it. When the delete and enter keys started giving me problems, I did what I should have done immediately, and shut it down to dry completely. The delete and enter keys are gone, but everything else functions perfectly well.
Initially, I tried to find some way to remap those keys to different buttons, but I haven't found any success. What I did discover, is that there is a virtual keyboard that can be accessed through the system preferences in OS X. Wherever your cursor is, the virtual keyboard will interact with it, just like the physical one does.
To turn it on, access System Preferences from the Apple menu. Click Keyboard and check the 'Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar' box. Now there is a new icon in the menu bar near the clock, with an asterisk and rows of dots. Click that button and select 'Show Keyboard Viewer'. A resizable virtual keyboard now floats on top of your windows. I shrink mine as small as it can go and shove it off the left side until I can just see the delete and enter buttons.
This keyboard can also display hints for special characters. While holding the option key, it will display which special characters are associated with which keys.