My girlfriend recently bought a Studio 17 with the same totally dumb concept. Why would I need one key access to screen brightness, CRT/LCD switching, wireless switching, volume/mute (when there are dedicated keys) etc as compared with F1 for help, F2 for rename/edit, F3 for search, F4 for edit url/folder location, F5 for refresh (and others depending on application). I'm a keyboard guy when it comes to things like spreadsheets and that "feature" makes me want to throw the thing out the window particularly F2. I know it's a BIOS change, but it's not my laptop.