Fixing Annoying Keyboard Repeating on an Asus eeePC 1000HA

Ever since I got my Asus eeePC 1000HA, it’s had one very annoying quality. The keyboard, under Windows and Linux, would repeat keystrokes, so if I typed “Peter” I would frequently get “Peeter” or “Petter” or something else with extra characters. Very annoying. More annoying was when I visited a client a month ago, and briefly used her eeePC 1000, with a different keyboard that did not display this issue.
I stumbled across a blog post that suggested using Windows’ FilterKeys to address the issue. I figured that GNOME had to have a similar feature, and of course, it did. Under the System menu, I chose Preferences | Assistive Technologies. Clicking Keyboard Accessibility brought up a window where I could adjust the Bounce Keys setting. I cranked it way down, which has the effect of filtering out duplicate keystrokes (whether it’s caused by my typing, a flaw in the hardware, or software). The only problem is that I now sometimes misspell a word with double letter, such as annoyance (which comes out as “anoyance”), but this is much less anoying er… annoying than the previous problem.
That solved, the eeePC is more useful than ever.

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