Could the keyboard have been one of those awful Dvorak keyboards? I can't STAND them - don't care how efficient they're supposed to be, I learned on QWERTY and I'm at almost 100 wpm, I'm not going to start over and I'm not sure my fingers can relearn a new system . . .
It's not the "funny letters", it's the layout. Totally unlike an English keyboard; I recall hunting hard for some essential character, such as @ or /.