Why is numlock off by default?

Question

Is there any specific reason for that? Any thought would be appreciated.

Not looking for how to enable it.

Answer 1

It depends. The numlock might be disabled (turned off) for some laptops and netbook keyboards due to the fact that in some cases the keyboards save area by assigning {4,5,6} to the keys {u,i,o}, and {1,2,3} to {j,k,l}. If numlock is turned on these keys will not function. Many laptops an internal keyboard with no numlock. Turning numpad on disables a lot of keys on those keyboards, and maps them to numbers.

On desktops it is just a matter of preference. Either you boot with numlock on and use the numberpad, or you boot with numlock off and use the cursors on it.

While most 'modern' keyboards now come with a dedicated cursor and a 6 key PgUp/Down/Home/End/Del/Insert block the choice is no longer as important as it used to be.