A4Tech KLS-5 Makeshift Interim Keyboard

So I built a new computer, and while I'm transferring stuff from the old one to the new one I'm running both at the same time. And I found that I only have one keyboard in the house (!).

Rather than get irritated swapping keyboard cables over all the time, I looked up what was the cheapest wired keyboard I could find, then went out and got an A4Tech KLS-5 wired USB keyboard for $9.

Size comparison to my old Logitech keyboard

It's small, and the build quality is...light, but for the price, I was actually pleasantly surprised. I hit keys and the characters appear on the screen. I couldn't ask for more.

There is only one problem (keep in mind, this is a $9 keyboard we're talking about), and that is the location of the \| key: it's right where Enter is on a normal keyboard. Every single carriage return I hit the \ key instead.

But for a short-term "give me a keyboard so I can type" solution, I would heartily recommend...well, nothing. My cheap keyboard worked. Now you know.

Remove annoying "WD SmartWare" automount

If you've got a WD USB hard drive plugged in, it will probably automount both the "content" part and the annoying "WD SmartWare" part.

The SmartWare is WD's attempt to help people out with some backup and other data management software. It cops a fair bit of flack from what I can see. I never used it, so can't comment, but I'm pretty sure it's all Windows-based anyway. On Linux it makes no sense to have it appear all the time.

To get rid of the automount, edit /etc/fstab (requires sudo) and add the following line:

LABEL=WD\x20SmartWare none udf rw,noauto 0 0

This solution was one of many possible solutions I found, but it worked and was easy. Thanks saltydog.

Update: While initially I thought the above solution worked, it stopped working at some point, because the "WD SmartWare" has now reappeared on my desktop. So I'm open to any other solutions...

Crowdsourcing FTW

Awesome example of a crowd-sourced investigation and solution:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2025126.