I don’t use Windows. If I did use Windows, I wouldn’t be able to use that trick.
On the laptop keyboard [I use an external compact keyboard with no keypad for ergonomic reasons], none of the alt and control keys are close enough to the keypad to be able to use both at once. Stretching for one keypress is an annoyance; stretching for an entire series is going to leave that hand hurting.
It seems very strange to me that they made an 87 key version instead of a 91 key version with numlock and a numeric keypad over-layed on Home, End, etc.
numeric keypads are good for bookkeeping software and some games, and it wouldn’t have changed the size relative to the 87 key version.
I never had trouble with the top row. I do have trouble twisting my fingers to use the keypad.
There should be no “twisting” involved if your desk setup is correct and your hands are placed properly and you’re utilizing proper typing techniques.
In fairness to the ‘CODE’(though I haven’t had a chance to try one, and you can pry my '85 Model M out of my cold dead hands, assuming its utility as a blunt weapon allows you to get that far) that review was written by somebody whose ideal is a tiny, flat, keyboard designed to replicate the experience of typing on a laptop as much as possible.
It’s also written from a fairly blatant OSX-centric perspective on what keys are ‘useful’ and what are ‘useless’: some of the lower-left-hand modifier keys common on Windows keyboards are simply dismissed as useless, while the equivalent row of Mac modifier keys passes without comment (in the same vein, the ‘Look a PS/2 adapter, that’s so antique I can barely stand it!’ comment conveniently ignores both the fact that supporting PS/2 costs next to nothing, and the fact that a great many of the world’s KVM switches, and the occasional cranky BIOS, still prefer PS/2 peripherals. Am I delighted that the reviewer lives in a brushed-aluminum world of 100% bluetooth? Sure. Can a I take a review that doesn’t examine its preconceptions for even a moment entirely seriously? Less so.)
There are certainly strong arguments to be made that old-school IBM keyboard layout is anachronistic (though, in a world with keycode remap software, there is an argument to be made for the ‘More keys = more power’ school, even if you disagree with the default keycodes); but if you actually enjoy typing on a nearly-nonexistent-key-travel glorified laptop keyboard, you aren’t even in the same market as any mechanical keyswitch design, much less the True Buckling Spring. Apple apparently makes very good low-travel chicklets, compared to other people who make low-travel chicklets; but that isn’t even playing the same game.
Actually, it’s very hard to find compact keyboards. I tried everywhere locally before ordering online.
“Don’t look for insult in accurate descriptions, or people won’t be honest with you any more, and honesty is more valuable to the recipient than to the bestower.”
What? Where was there an “accurate description”?
… “There should be no “twisting” involved if your desk setup is correct and your hands are placed properly and you’re utilizing proper typing techniques.”
“If your haads are placed properly”
“and you’re using proper typing techniques” …
I can’t type with both hands at once. I can’t use what are considered ‘proper’ typing, or ‘proper’ writing techniques because of my disabilities. Yes, it screws with my life. Yes, it means I have somewhat unusual requirements in a keyboard, I tried to make that clear in my first post, that I have unusual requirements and different people have different requirements.
I moved 4 posts to a new topic: I miss the old site with comments on the same page
I have a functional PS/2 M that I was just getting rid of disposing. If you’re serious, it’s yours for shipping.
If point’n’grunt (which is an allusion to an interview with Eben Moglen) is not an accurate description, how exactly did you know to take offense? Let me give you the whole thing, although you will probably find it more objectionable than anything I’ve said.
In 1979, when I was working at IBM, I wrote an internal memo lambasting Apple’s Lisa, its first attempt to adapt Xerox PARC technology, the graphical user interface, into a desktop PC. I was then working on the development of APL2, a nested array, algorithmic, symbolic language, and was committed to the idea of making languages that were better than natural for procedural thought. The idea was to do for whole ranges of human thinking what mathematics has been doing for thousands of years in the quantitative arrangement of knowledge, and to help people think in more precise and clear ways. What I saw in the Xerox PARC technology was the caveman interface: you point and you grunt. A massive winding down, regressing away from language in order to address the technological nervousness of the user. Users wanted to be infantilized, to return to a pre-linguistic condition in the using of computers, and the Xerox PARC technology’s primary advantage was that it allowed users to address computers in a pre-linguistic way. This was to my mind a terribly socially retrograde thing to do, and I have not changed my mind about that.
I like GUIs for exactly three reasons, but I’m glad that Microsoft and Apple have stopped trying to get rid of CLIs and embraced the idea that there are richer and more complex interactions possible between machines and people than mice alone can possibly provide. The famous Apple single-button mouse only offered more creative input than “point and grunt” to graphic artists, who could draw with it. Everybody else was just selecting from a limited menu, they weren’t cooking their own dishes. Keyboards are great - the more buttons the better!
Use whatever you prefer.
What happened to those fancy ergonomic keyboards with the rows that sloped downwards? They were a big thing once (and hugely popular with some folks), but I haven’t heard of them in ages.
My impression is that ‘ergonomic keyboards’ as a phylum suffered from curious evolutionary pressures: On the low end, they were more expensive to produce and took up more space than boring rectangular ones and have largely become extinct. Microsoft kicks one out occasionally; but it isn’t a healthy market. On the high end, where the pro-coders-who-would-be-totally-doomed-if-they-got-carpal-tunnel and the ‘ADA sez that corporate has to pay for it’ customers live, the volumes are small; but the designs are more radical than ever, as are the prices.
Done.
Let me know how ya wish to proceed.
Microsoft just made a new one, actually.
Don’t fret! The shift keys (left and right) are discrete inputs, giving you a total of 10!
The CODE keyboard looks like decent value for the money, but not really breaking new ground beyond what a lot of Filco-style keyboards and others are doing. I have a CM Storm Quickfire w/ Cherry MX Blues that feel great w good build quality (including a weighted base) for half the price (they don’t have LEDs or DIP switches, however). The super compact Happy Hacking keyboards are more compact and sexier, but are quite a bit more expensive. Someone else mentioned EliteKeyboards and they stock all sorts of models/varieties of good mechanical keyboards. Like I said, I’m not sure that the CODE keyboard is doing much different from these.
The ultimate hacker’s keyboards IMO are the ones keyboard enthusiasts are designing and building themselves like the ErgoDox. Massdrop has been running group buys pretty much constantly (2 days left for the current one) for those that are interested and it’s totally configurable and open source. Here’s a recent review at AnandTech.
BTW, no need to pine for a Model M - they still make em, and they’re pretty reasonably priced.
Yes, I still see the ones split down the middle with the two halves angled towards each other on occasion; I’m thinking of a specific variety where keys like E, D, C and I, K, and M are deeper inside the keyboard than the keys adjacent to them, supposedly to better match the differing lengths of the fingers. (As you may imagine, portability is not an advantage of this design.)
I have a tongue, too…
Shame there’s no option for a UK layout. Such a small thing to change too…
