I see no use for the numlock key, I'd rather just have the numpad on the whole time. Are there actually cases where it is useful or people who for some reason prefer their numpad turned off?
Right, but do you ever turn num lock off? I think the OP was trying to say it should just be stuck on because why would you use those arrow, home/end/pg up/etc buttons that kick in if num lock is off?
For a full size, 104-key PC keyboard, everything that is mapped to the numpad is also somewhere else, and the keys are spaced out enough that you'd almost never need to turn off the numpad, so the key is just there for oddball legacy apps that do weird stuff. It was more important before IBM released the fully "modern" 101-key Model M.
For laptop keyboards and other reduced format keyboards that still include all or part of a numpad, it can still be useful. I actually use autohotkeys instead, but one of my budget mechanical keyboards only has the arrow nav keys and the rest are accessed by turning off NumLock.
I have a smaller keyboard that doesn’t have dedicated arrow keys, or any of the home, page up, etc. They’re all on the numpad, so numlock for me is very useful.
I think it is still is useful, as some software still hasn’t figured out how to turn on numlock automatically, and for a few applications number pad scrolling can be better than the arrow keys, but it is probably less useful than the scroll lock key at this point.
I don’t think I’ve ever used numlock for anything other than “oh shit, I must have accidentally hit it when I was entering numbers via 10 key so I need to turn it off.
It depends on if you are a heavy mouse user or a heavy keyboard user and you are using a laptop with a restricted keyboard. Personally to scroll a document I prefer the buttons page up/down home/end. Often I also use those buttons to select big parts of a file that I want to copy. E. g. Shift+Ctrl+End form me is a useful combination. On the other hand I rarely use the numeric pad for numbers, but I also feel more comfortable typing with the left hand, I guess that a lot more people heavy keyboard user would prefer the numeric pad.
Yes the mouse is changing the habits for a lot of people, but the numlock may still be useful for some.
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