I have had two laptops that I have played minecraft on, both had function keys which did things such as change the volume, and on both the keys do nothing in minecraft, so I have never been able to open the debug screen and anything else useful bound to my function keys. Please help,I thought they would work on my new laptop, but no.
Your laptop keyboard should have an 'Fn' key in the bottom-left, beside the Ctrl, Alt and Windows keys. Press and hold that, then press the function key you wish to use, with the Fn key still pressed, then release the keys.
Stu