Glad to see UK english included, about time. Its not just spelling that is different, i.e. words like organise, colourise, defence, theatre etc, there is also the keyboard layout.

Maybe one of these days the US will also conform to international paper sizes too. A4 and A3 etc. Hell, I think their pint is a different size. Not only that they drive on the wrong side of the road.. :-)

Toodle pip!

@Waethorn

Thanks for the reply. Yes it could be in XP, but simply turning off the 'Show in taskbar' for Regional settings solved the problem in XP. Not so in Vista, where one has to remove the offending keyboard from Regional settings .. even then ..

But I don't know what it is: a CTRL +SHIFT + xyz combination that was triggering the swtich or is it a true bug? I don't know. I suspect a bug, but am willing to admit I might be setting it off with some CTRL + SHIFT + xyz as I often use keyboard shortcuts.

@Lemon Saucy:

This is a "bug" that is present in XP as well.

When you reseal a computer, and the end-user chooses Canada as a region, it installs the two native keyboards for Canada by default: Canadian Multilingual and French(Canada). Regardless of which you choose, the US keyboard is also installed as a side-effect by default if you install an English copy because Canada uses the US English bits (there is no exclusively Canadian English version).

I've suggested to them before that when a user (or OEM) chooses a default keyboard for any given region, there should not be any additional keyboard layouts installed automatically. Their suggestion was to use some kind of login script to remove the additional keyboards without providing any additional information on how to do so, which I find both annoying and quite absurd. I've never found any information in TechNet on how to find the regkeys or commands to suggest that this was even possible either.

BTW: The way to resolve this from an end-user perspective is to go into Language and Region Settings and remove the additional layouts. Also, you can go into the Administrative Settings tab and copy the settings to the Default User and System account so that new user accounts only have one keyboard, and you won't see the keyboard button on the Welcome screen. Also, the Canadian Multilingual is NOT the same as the US layout. It includes accent keys just like the Quebec layout, but the layout is different, and it favours the English version of some puntuation (French quotes look like << and >> rather than " ). There is no dedicated Canadian English layout. If you want a pure English layout that you are probably used to, you'll use "US" as the layout. You can still keep the region and language settings as Canada, and this helps for online content and Office spellchecker defaults and still use US as a keyboard for English Canada input language, which is what I do.

"The most notable addition, curiously, is UK English: Previously these users had to "make do" with US English, Microsoft notes."

don't think its that curious that us in the UK would like to have a system with our own regional spellings. I like my U's in colour and favourites. After all, UK english is english!

Wow! Very nice.

If word ever gets back to Microsoft from here: make sure the keyboards don't slip!

It doesn't affect XP, but starting with Vista, I noticed a bug (it's *partly* fixed with Win7 SP1, but even then it sometimes still happens ..) and it is with the keyboard layout.

I install Windows 7 (and Vista, XP 2000, etc.) with Canadian regional settings. That means 2 main keyboard layouts: Canadian English (identical to U.S.) and French (you know: e é è ..with accents etc.).

Occasionally with Vista OEM, and occasionally but less so now with Win 7 SP1, the keyboard layout will suddenly slip from the default English to the French, messing up my typing. To fix it, I have to at least relaunch the application (often IE) or log out and log back in (with Vista I'd have even have to reboot).

I hope the Microsoft gang go over with a fine tooth comb what goes on with the keyboard layouts, as this is a more basic feature of the operating system that shouldn't be messing up.

Anyway, good stuff!