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A Selective History Of The Keyboard
Anonymous Gimp writes "Today's keyboards aren't what they used to be, no sir! Back in my day, we had our BS technology; our keyboards had chassis which allowed 'em to be thrown off a 3-story building and still work - barely dented. Yes those were the days. Now we've got these newfangled Wireless Ergonomic E-Mail button membrane keyboards. To heck with them, I say!"
While I don't like the gummy feeling of a lot of keyboards that are apparently trying to be 'soft', I am not exactly a fan of the loud clicky types either.
The keyboard that I've found works best and feels best to me is the original Microsoft Natural keyboard. It is ergonomically designed with no extra frills like app buttons across the top. It's also larger and a little sturdier than the Natural Light keyboards Microsoft is pushing these days with their freaky arrow keys and misaligned Insert/Delete/Home/End/PageUp/PageDown key block.
Microsoft! Do something good for the users! Bring back the original Natural keyboard!
I have been pwned because my
Yessir, back in my day we had these incredible keyboards. I have a VIC-20 keyboard and and Commodore 64 keyboard. Some people claimed they were kind of big, but for keyboards, they were sure packed with features! Like computers! :)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
You know, the ones with the steel plates inside? I have 5 of them, 4 in storage, hopefully enough to last the rest of my life. The one I am typing this on is from my IBM AT that I got in 1992. Still going strong..... You can occasionally find them at garage sales(!) and swap meets and such. If you see one, grab it. It is really the best keyboard.
I remember with fondness the big old solid metal cased IBM keyboards, I guess the fondness comes from the fact that it was my first pc (well, ok, the companies, but the first one I used). But I would actually much prefer a modern quiet membrane keyboard. I work in an open plan office with desks in clusters of 4, and it's very distracting whne you're trying to pin down a bug and having to think and concentrate but your neighbour is clacking away typing an email (or a slashdot post!) The keyboards we have now are Compaq (well, probably not, but that's what it says on the label) and they are quite noisy when you're typing quickly, and very distracting. My keyboard at home (generic no-name $15.00 membrane keyboard) is much quieter and even has a nicer feel. It has all hose fancy media and internet buttons which I never use, I bought it cuz I needed a new keyboard fats and didn't have much money. I went for the cheapest on the shelf and was actually pleasently surprised.
The other thing I like about mebrane keyboards is that they're very easy to strip down and clean when the accumulated crud from sandwich crumbs and cake bars gets too much!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Well, its slashdotted, so you're excused.
But BS = Buckling Spring.
Up until recently, I have been using trusty 'ol IBM PS/2 keyboard. Its trusty mechanical feedback was great, not to mention nearly error-free when working properly. Also, when my high school chucked out its old computers, I was able to salvage about 15 to 20 of these beauties. Nearly all worked perfectly, and those that didn't were not to hard to fix with a solder iron and spare parts.
But recently, my wrists have begun to bother me (probably CTS setting in; and I'm nary 20 years old) and the old keyboards refused to work on my new rig (I probably could have modified one of them to work, but college really cuts out the free time). So I went to Wally Mart Computer Center and picked up this Logitech Navigator keyboard. This is by far one of the best keyboards I have used. Sure, those Mikeysoft Naturals are comfy, but they take up too much space and it is quite difficult to play Unreal Tournament with. The tactile sensation, while softer and not nearly as loud as the PS/2's, has a reassuring, yet subtle "crunch" to it. Not to mention, it has a scroll wheel built in (I use mine to switch apps, it is quite handy), and numerous other handy buttons. All the Ctrl functions are silkscreened on the front side of the keys for handy reference. And it was only $30.
The most unique feature, however, is the zero-tilt design. All of the keys are perfectly flat; normal keyboards "curve up" as you approach the number row, but all the keys on this keyboard are on the same plane, parallel to the desk. I have to say that it takes some getting used to, but in the end it is far more comfortable than a regular "tilted" keyboard. Now if only I can figure out how to get some of these extra buttons and stuff working in Linux.... damn semi-n00b skillz.
While I miss my PS/2's (they are still attached to my other boxes), I would have to say that I am quite impressed with the Navigator. Hopefully this thing will be as durable as the old PS/2's.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Dvorak superiority is probably a myth.
Grr... the article perpetuates the urban legend that qwerty is designed to "slow down the typist".
That's not true at all! What he found was that when typing quickly on old typewriters, hitting two keys that were right next to each other would jam. So instead of moving keys around to "slow you down" he moved keys around to speed you up! By moving commonly used keys to opposite sides of the keyboard, the typist was able to type quickly without jamming the typewriter.
It's been shown that dvorak actually makes RSI worse because commonly used keys are hit by the same finger. Where qwerty spreads things out so that all fingers are used frequently, dvorak causes you to use half your fingers far more frequently than the others.
Also qwerty relies a lot on alternating hands.. this is shown to be much faster than using a single hand to type a word.
Anyway here's a pic if you like to drool over pics of keyboards (the page itself is not so informative unless you speak Japanese). You can probably still buy these things used on ebay... if you use a Mac and have an ADB input (I don't think they have them on the newest ones but I'm not sure) that you don't mind using your keyboard in, pick one up!! This keyboard rules over all others.... I'm so obsessed with this keyboard that I'm considering getting a USB to ADB adapter so I can plug it into my tibook.
Keyboards do matter.
Are you kidding me? Microsoft uses whats known as "foam keyswitches" in their Natural Elite keyboards. Do a little research on keyboard technology and you will find that foam keyswitches are the cheapest, crapiest, most error prone type of keyswitches! Foam keyswitches don't last long, so plan on buying a new keyboard every few years. Foam keyswitches are very sensitive to moisture. Get them even the slightest bit wet, and you can forget it. Don't even get me started on the poor tactile feedback, the keystroke "bounce" errors, and the keystroke "sticking" and unrecognized keystroke errors... all of which occur with foam keyswitches.
Doing a little more research on the technologies and you will see why Microsoft uses foam keyswitches. Its not because they are quiet because a better more durable keyswitch technology with better tactile feedback exists: rubber dome keyswitches. No, Microsoft uses foam keyswitches in their keyboards because they are the cheapest. It saves them money because the average user doesn't know a damn thing about computers. Buzz words like CPU frequency numbers, RAM capacity numbers, and harddrive sizes are about the only specs that the average computer user looks for when buying a PC. Keyboards? Keyboard technology? Nah, they won't know any better, just give them foam keyswitches.
Any writer, programmer, or gamer should definitely keep away from foam keyswitch based keyboards. If you want a quiet keyboard, get a rubber dome keyswitch based keyboard. If you want THE best keyboard money can buy, minus loud typing noise, then go with a buckling spring capacitive switch keyboard.
Microsoft's mice are another topic in and of itself. Lets just say that compared to Microsoft's keyboards, their mice are pieces of gold! I mean, you can't get worse than a foam keyswitch based keyboard.
Listen kids, back in MY days, we used teletypes. Those keyboards were not for the weak. You had to hammer down the keys. And when one key was down, the other were mechanically locked and could not be pressed. You would hurt your fingers if you tried to hammer two keys at once.
The wonder of the teletype! No electronics. It was all mechanics. Imagine that! And they also had a paper tape reader/puncher which was handy to save your programs if your 100K disk allowance was used up.
)9TSS
Too many of the new keyboards have the capslock key where the control key should be and used to be. Correcting this would make the keyboard more ergonomic. How often does anyone, aside from people writing Nigerian mail scams, use the caps lock? Odds are not as often as the control key, even for MS-Windows users.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The Happy Hacking Keyboard is about the best new keyboard I've found. Good feel, no extra keys, remarkably small, but keys as big as an old IBM.
From their site:
- NO CAPS LOCK KEY
- NO WINDOWS KEY
- CTRL Key is in Right Position
- Full Size Key Pitch
They don't have any of those cutesy 'Shop on the Web' buttons that link you to long-dead dotcoms or even seperate number pad or arrow keys - this is a keyboard perfect for serious text editing. (Dare I say it? A real man's keyboard!)
If you've ever used one, you probably know what I'm talking about...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
we used to run them through the dishwasher when they got too dirty - and they would work fine afterwards.
reminds me of an urban legend/ it horror story about some IT guy telling some chick that she needed to clean out her machine and she ran it through the dishwasher.
Small enter, big pipes
I think there's a lubricant you can get that will help with that...
(sorry.)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
My own review of the IBM 42H1292 and related 'boards is here, in case anybody cares.
There have been a number of posts complaining about how they have a new keyboard and it doesn't work in Linux. Well, though the Keyboard HOWTO doesn't mention it, these new keyboards work without modification to the standard X setup. That is to say, when you press an "internet" key, the X server recognizes this and recieves the scancode. All you have to do is map that scancode to a useful key, and presto, you have a functional internet keyboard.
Step by Step:The thing with qwerty that bothers me the most is that it requires my fingers to dance over the keyboard all spidery, while dvorak only forces me to move my fingers once or twice per word. I worked as a translator one summer, typing all day long. After a while, my finger began aching. That's when I seriously began thinking of switching.
Look: some economic students want to badmouth dvorak and promote qwerty for some rather silly reasons having to do with economic theory. I don't care about that.
I've used qwerty for twelve years before I switched to dvorak. Now I use both (nothing but dvorak on my own computer, though). The switch wasn't that easy, but it was worth it. It took me a few days to learn it properly. (One of my friends learned it in one evening, though - she wrote freakishly fast almost right away.)
More and more people are hearing of dvorak from the internet or their friends, and some of them switch. I know several people IRL (living in my town) who uses dvorak. In the typewriter age, switching to dvorak is a difficult and expensive task. In the computer age, switching is a manner of typing "setxkbmap dvorak" in the nearest xterm. (Have an image of the new keyboard layout on your screen, and look at it instead of at the keys. Keep the fingers on the home row. If you like it (it takes about a month to be good, though), you can mod your keyboard or get a special one.)
Dvorak isn't the be-all and end-all of keyboards, but I think it's an improvement on qwerty, just as qwerty was an improvement on the abcde-style layouts before it.
Dvorak won't miraculously cure your RSI (although it did help against my finger-aches) or make you become the fastest typist in the world (although the fastest typist in the world did use dvorak).
A. The loads on the right and left hands are equalized.
B. The load on the home (middle) row is maximized.
C. The frequency of alternating hand sequences is maximized and the frequency of same-finger typing is minimized.
If you look at QWERTY, you'll see that A is not satisfied very well at all - many of the most commonly used letters such as A,S,D,F,E,R,T and C are in the left hand. (The article actually states that QWERTY fails at this - 57% to 43% balance between hands.) Condition B is certainly not satisfied either - look at the preponderance of vowels and common letters in the top row. The last condition is the only one that QWERTY comes close to satisfying, but even then try typing words like "exaggerated" or "monopoly" (thanks to Jared Diamond and his April 1997 Discover Magazine article). Dvorak's layout is, in fact, optimized for all three of these conditions, using careful analysis of letter frequency, finger movement, and letter combinations. Note the presence of all the vowels on the home row, and common consonants like "snthd" on the home row of the right hand. This makes it highly likely that after the typist uses a vowel he will be switching to the opposite hand (likely the home row) to type the next letter.
What I'm getting at is that Dvorak's advantage may be more in hand/wrist comfort than anything else. I'll admit that claims of increased speed using Dvorak are probably not persuasive enough to make the argument for superiority. The article's strongest point is showing that typing speed varies little as a function of the layout of the keys. I'm willing to buy that anyone can type about as fast on any layout using the modern "shift" style keyboard. But speed isn't the only consideration. I haven't read or heard about many studies making the claim for reduced RSI while using Dvorak, but I'd guess that it's true. Anyone who's used the layout can confirm that typing on it has a flow and continuity that QWERTY cannot match - every time I'm forced to use a QWERTY keyboard I'm struck by how much my fingers are stretching all around to find the letters (and yes, I can still touch-typed in QWERTY after a minute or two of warm-up and finger-conversion - it's kind of like being keyboard bilingual). With Dvorak typing is just more natural feeling, like a ball rolling down a smooth hill. QWERTY is like rolling that same ball down a flight of steps. And if you gain a little extra typing speed out of it, all the better! (For what it's worth, the world typing speed record has been held by Dvorak typists for many years now.)
This is not some evangelical manifesto urging everyone to change layouts - but if you do make the switch, I promise you won't be disappointed. Both Windows and Mac have built-in Dvorak capability, and switching between the two is just a simple key combination. I've found that Mac is a bit more cooperative in this regard, but Windows is passably good. It's easy to fall into the trap of "well, if most of the world uses it, it must be the best thing out there." Doesn't hold true for Windows, does it?
Was that out loud?
Of course, keyboard layouts were the least of the changes between green-screen terminal applications and PC's, but we're left with the result nonetheless.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander