What are the caps lock and scroll lock keys for?

"You're not the only person who can't see the point of CapsLock: www.ihatethecapslockkey.com

On that site you can find a utility to do make the CapsLock key act as different key. But you're already doing this with AutoHotKey, but with AutoHotKey you can get more creative in your remapping - and make ScrollLock do something else too."

"The Linux virtual consoles pause the scrolling of output when scroll-lock is turned on (locking the scrolling, I suppose).

Since I very rarely use caps-lock, I remapped it to the “compose” key, which allows me to press a sequence of keys to produce a “composite” character. For example, when I press Caps Lock, /, o, then I get the character ø.

I suppose caps-lock would be very suitable to COBOL developers, since they are always yelling their code."

"Double tapping the Scroll Lock is used by many KVM switches to switch screens. I suppose it was chosen because it's rarely used for anything else any more.

Some (e.g. Mac) keyboards label the PrintScreen, Scroll Lock and Pause/Break keys F13, F14 and F15 but they appear to have the same function when connected to a PC."

Scroll lock is also used by Lotus Notes. When scroll lock is enabled, Lotus Notes will scroll the page.

"I guess, no one is old enough to remember the real reason for the caps lock key. Yes, it comes from the typewriters. You see, typewriters did not have these fancy fonts we are all used to. They just had two types of letters: upper and lower case. So, when you wrote your MEMO, or your RESUME, or your TPS REPORT, you would write these titles in capital letters, as you would every SECTION HEADER, and everything you would now put in BOLDFACE or ITALICS (well, some fancy typewriters had italics).

Why Apple still ships the Macbook with a caps lock key, including a built-in tiny LED, is a mystery to me."