There is a problem specific to Canada that needs some consideration on SU.
Until relatively recently (2003), all Prime Ministers ("Presidents") had come from Quebec -- for 43 out of 50 years. As a result, many hardware companies (Acer, HP, etc) succumbed to pressure from those (Francophone) federal governments to only sell laptops with Canadian-French keyboards.
For those not in the know, the CF keyboard has been changed to make room for some French characters. The end result is this, with half-width Ctrl and Shift keys and a vertical Enter key. For the 2/3 of Canada that is English, this is highly frustrating.
Today, if you visit BestBuy or Costco or ?, the odds are extremely high that you will not be able to purchase a laptop with a normal English keyboard. In fact, today I was shopping online with BestBuy for a laptop where the photos clearly show the keyboard layout to be English-only. However, both online and at the store this laptop comes only with CF keyboard. False advertising? Read this and this and this. We have our problems.
It is often impossible to contact the brand companies. For example, Acer doesn't deal directly with end customers but only with volume resellers. So how does one actually purchase an Acer laptop with a normal keyboard in Canada?
I asked this question on SU and was frogmarched off the playing field. But this is a legitimate question where sharing user experiences is the only way to get the answer. It is not merely a matter of procurement, as the mods claim.
Procurement suggests that the matter is one of process or opinion. This question pertains to fact and method. And in this case, as with undocumented Microsoft command line switches, there is only one way to ferret out the information: sharing. And happily, this is exactly what the StackExchange network is about.
