Das Keyboard + typing passwords = tricky

So in general, I’m very happy with my new Das Keyboard, and my touch typing has actually improved quite a bit since I’ve been using it since it has no symbols on the keys. One point of minor frustration has been typing passwords, especially since most of my passwords have symbols and numbers in them, which means I need to take special care in hitting the right keys.

So recently I prepared a VPC image for a course I was teaching on which I installed a fresh copy of Windows Server 2008. For the administrative password to the VPC I typed in ‘P@ssw0rd’ which is my standard password for courseware and other things that don’t really need protection. Of course when students opened their VPCs on the first day of class, none of them were able to log in – not a great way to start a course. Fortunately, I thought through what must have happened, and after a little trial and error, discovered that the password was actually ‘P@ssw-rd’ :) I guess I had it coming…