This morning, my computer had a little functionality hiccup that got me wondering: why is this even possible?

The problem stemmed from the Num Lock key on the keyboard getting out of sync. The light was lit, but hitting the numeric keypad keys didn't get me any numbers, instead the cursor moved around the spreadsheet I was editing.

It's a minor annoyance, really, but an annoyance none the less. More to the point, it left me pondering why we still even need this "Num Lock" key.

Well, of course it is there for a reason. In the early 80's, when IBM first introduced the PC, it came with a smaller keyboard. The ten keys between the numeric keypad and the main part of the keyboard weren't there. The keypad had these cursor movement functions on them because that was how you moved the cursor.

Later on, however, IBM came to realize that the PC was being taken far more seriously by their customers than they had anticipated (they thought anything other than a mainframe was a joke) and they added the ten keys to the keyboard.

So now, consider this from my perspective of having come to the world of the PC late. In the 80's and 90's, I was a user of Commodore computers. These machines either had a numeric keypad that -- get this -- only did numbers, or, in one case (Commodore 64) had no numeric keypad. Prior to owning and using a PC, I also was a regular user of an Apple III (no, not a typo) which had a numeric keypad that just did numbers, and through college and early working life, regularly used mainframes, for which the keypad just did numbers.

Now, I understand that the earliest machines to have these extra ten keys needed to be able to emulate this bassackwards system of using the keypad for navigation -- the early software might not recognize the new keys, but surely, by the time I bought my first PC in 1996, finally giving up on my preferred Amiga platform, these problems would have been resolved.

So here it is, 13 years later, and I'm still getting bit in the ass by this stupid kludge that was introduced over 20 years ago because IBM couldn't read the writing on the walls. Really, in this day and age, what purpose does a numeric keypad serve, besides to type numbers? Great. Can we please ditch the NumLock key now, and all of the crap that it brings with it?