Append after last character in line in vim editor

I am using vim in the cygwin terminal right now.

I am looking for a way to go behind the last character of a line to append words. When I use $i all I type is inserted before the last character.

Solution 1:

just press A:

 A   Append text at the end of the line [count] times.

(from :help A)

your initial try is not working because you go to EOL with $, but then you use i instead of a:

 i   Insert text before the cursor [count] times.
     When using CTRL-O in Insert mode |i_CTRL-O| the count
     is not supported.

while

 a   Append text after the cursor [count] times.  If the
     cursor is in the first column of an empty line Insert
     starts there.  But not when 'virtualedit' is set!

but as i said: the real solution is A.

Solution 2:

Create a .vimrc file in your home directory. An empty one will do. This will get vim out of its default vi compatibility mode. This will allow you to move the cursor to the end of the line using End or the arrow keys when in insert mode.