Panic began to tighten her chest. She was about to fail.

Using function keys on an HP laptop is not broken—it’s just a design trade-off. The key (pun intended) is understanding the Fn toggle and the visual language of the icons. Once you master Fn+Esc and learn to read the tiny symbols, you move from frustrated user to confident power user. And that’s the most interesting transformation of all.

She stared frantically at the keyboard. The F6 key had a icon of a touchpad with a line through it. She instinctively hit F6, hoping it was an 'escape.' Instantly, the mouse cursor froze. She had just disabled the touchpad.

...