So if you are like me and use Ventrilo / Teamspeak to talk with your friends, you have probably been forced to chose a key to map “Push to Talk” to. Some may choose a mouse button, others a key.
In the beginning I had bound my Mouse4 button to talk, but this proved to be problematic because in a web browser it was the “back” hotkey. Meaning whenever I was browsing the internet and wanted to talk I would lose the page I was looking at.
I first started using the letter “q”. It worked for awhile, I hardly ever used it in words. But while playing Eve-online in a very crucial fight I was using the CTRL modifier to lock a target, and while talking on teamspeak at the same time hit CTRL+Q effectively quitting the program, this had to be fixed.
I then transferred to using a different bind, the letter “v”. I honestly don’t know my reasoning behind this… perhaps it was because “v” was directly underneath my left thumb, it also wasn’t used very much but it also gave me in-game problems. While playing Starcraft 2 and talking on Ventrilo at the same time I selected a batch of ~15 drones, clicked v and made 15 overlords, wasting 1500 of my precious minerals… this had to go.
Then I saw the light.
CAPS LOCK
In any PC Game caps lock is used for one thing and one thing alone, WRITING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. But you don’t really need it, because shift is right below it. PERFECT!
Now, if you are like me and talk on Ventrilo regularly while typing CapsLock can be a bit of a nuisance, well I have a solution for that. Rebind Caps Lock to Scroll Lock. Scroll Lock isn’t needed and doesn’t really serve a purpose. You can also rebind ScrollLock to CapsLock if you need to write a lengthy post in ALL CAPS!
For those that are frightened with the Windows Registry and HEX keys, I recommend using this tool SharpKeys to rebind your buttons.
Have fun!