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Stop Trying To 'Innovate' Keyboards, You're Just Making Them Worse
FuzzNugget writes "Peter Bright brings the hammer down on the increasing absurdities of laptop keyboard design, from the frustrating to the downright asinine, like the 'adaptive keyboard' of the new Lenovo X1 Carbon. He says, 'The X1's Adaptive Keyboard may have a superior layout to a regular keyboard (I don't think that it does, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend that it does), but that doesn't matter. As long as I have to use regular keyboard layouts too, the Adaptive Keyboard will be at a huge disadvantage. Every time I use another computer, I'll have to switch to the conventional layout. The standard layout has tremendous momentum behind it, and unless purveyors of new designs are able to engineer widespread industry support—as Microsoft did with the Windows keys, for example—then their innovations are doomed to being annoyances rather than improvements.' When will laptop manufacturers focus on perfecting a standardized design rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with every new generation?"
Anyone else find that you cannot get 16:10 laptops these days unless they're made by Apple?
Damn the "movie nerd" 16:9 ratio!
Please don't put cursor keys where the right shift key should be. Nothing like pressing cursor-up in a console window when you meant to type a capital letter.
The worst keyboard I ever used was the Logitech MX5500. Poor design all over - it was clear that whoever designed it was focussing on ideas that sounded nice, but were ergonomically unfeasible. Stupid things like putting keys underneath the keypad such that pressing them from a natural posture caused cramps, or removing the numlock key and replacing it with some calculator function integrated with the LCD display. Perhaps they forgot that computers powerful calculators in of themselves? The list went on - I wrote an eight page engineering design critique (I teach college mechatronic design) and sent it to them. The logitech PR person who answered it said they'd send it on to the design office. From what's come out of there since, I'm sure they just sent it straight to trash. :P
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Many Europeans are already used to using different keyboards at different times. As we speak I'm typing on a Danish-layout keyboard remapped to US-English. Which is... almost like US-English, except that the Enter key is vertical rather than horizontal, so \| is located to the left of enter rather than above it (can't remap the physical shape of the keys...). Oh, and `~ is to the left of Z. Sometimes I use a UK keyboard, which is somewhat different yet again.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Too much "innovation" is appearance only, or the act of making gee-whiz gadgets that look like they might be far out. The clueless buying public falls for it every time.
Back in the 1990s, I used one of those Microsoft ergonomic keyboards for a little while... but then I learned that it was in fact putting more strain my hands. Back to the old tried-and-true 100-year-old typewriter style configuration.
Every time I've tried any kind of tricked out keyboard, the result has been the same. It doesn't work better than the original. For innovation to be actual innovation, it must solve a problem and do so in the context of reality, not merely be a nifty concept or look.
Futurist Traditionalism
Problem solved. Next?
As long as we have the option of buying the regular layout (and we do), who cares? If a minority of models make changes, that's great, one of them might be a genuinely better way to interface with your computer and a real innovation. The alternative is stagnation.
...as soon as you can patent "improving standardized designs"...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The "Windows key" location existed before on other systems, it was called the "meta" key. Apple had the Apple logo in that place, Sun keyboards had the diamond logo, even the Symbolics machines had the key well before Microsoft even talked about ripping off DOS.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I would pay a lot of money for a backlit, Microsoft Natural style keyboard. Googling indicates I'm not alone. I don't care about gaming, but when I walk into my home office at night and sit down, I want to see where all the keys are. And I'm used to the Microsoft Natural keyboard shape from many years of exclusive use.
You getting this, Microsoft / clone manufacturers?
Funny the stories mentions the X1 Carbon. I have an X1 Carbon and it has a slightly different layout than the picture in the link but it has an equally fk'd up design too.
I constantly get backspace and delete mixed up and it is frustrating.
Take a look at
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/concept/
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/tactus/
and other things from this family.
This is an _adaptive keyboard_.
Yes, it is plain horrible for coding or text editing, but idea behind it is to support some more niche programs for video/photo editing, 3d modelling etc, with keyboard changing icons on keys depending in which mode are.
Input devices are the most important part of any computer, yet we don't worry about keyboards/mice on desktops, because we know we can swap them with something we prefer, at will. With laptops, we're stuck with the cheap junk that's included. And worse, we're stuck with the economics laptop makers are under, and we don't want to pay $500 extra for a high-end laptop, just to get a $20 keyboard we like.
If laptop makers standardized on a few sizes of keyboard, and made them easy to slide in and out and swap with a different model, life would be good...
It's POSSIBLE for laptop makers to get it right and include a great keyboard with their laptops. There are innumerable awesome small keyboards out there. In fact, I use nothing but ultra compact keyboards for my home computers, because the ergonomics of super-flat are best, and the lack of a keypad on the side makes reaching over for the mouse vastly quicker and easier. To make an awesome laptop, start with a keyboard like this one: http://typematrix.com/
But the odds of them doing that are far too slim, and there's just too little incentive to ever expect it to happen. The input market is far too specialized. Instead, just make the parts interchangeable, and not only will your core customers be happy with their input options even on the cheapest laptops, but your products will also sell better to non-English speakers, who want a very different keyboard.
It's long overdue.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As a Linux user it's sometimes necessary to cleanly reboot the machine through the Kernel call Alt+PrintScreen+ REISUB, I don't see how to do that on this laptop?
Putting the home/end/etc cluster in upper right in the same configuration as desktop keyboards is one of the more intuitive pieces of design I've seen. I use home/end a lot while coding, and it took me about 5 minutes to adjust the muscle memory when I got my first Thinkpad (well, only Thinkpad; the T40 is built like a tank).
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
cubic yards of standard keyboards are out there for you. some of the rest of us appreciate some choice and variation. carry a standard USB keyboard for those times you have to use someone else's machine and don't like their keyboard.
This is the same principle that makes heavy customization of OS installations not worth while. If you have to move between a large number of machines, you can't count on that certain editor being installed or your favorite key mapping configured. After a while, you give up and get accustomed to the least common denominator.
Move the Control(Ctrl) key back to it's rightfull place where CapsLock is on most keyboards..
And make the 'Windows' key into a Meta key and I'll be happy with the basic layout.
OK, the poster has a valid argument perhaps within the Slashdot community, whom in a given day, may traverse their hands across a dozen or more keyboards in their various tasks, but the argument to manufacturers falls completely flat.
Believe it or not fellow keyboard jockeys, the other 95% of the planet will buy a laptop...to use that laptop, pretty much exclusively, for the next 4-5 years. The average person does not know nor care about the day-to-day keyboard issues of the 5%.
To be honest, I'd rather see vendor variety. Backlight keys, increasingly intelligent designs and layouts, and even the return of the buckling-spring design have all come about through constant innovation.
Let me put this to you another way. Within your demands for a "standard" design, do you really want to subject the world to iKeyboard as the standard? Be careful what you ask for, for the 95% control your fate.
In my opinion, the best keyboard for over a decade is the "whatever the cheapest keyboard Microsoft is selling".
Currently it's this: http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/wired-keyboard-200/JWD-00046
It's wired.
It has all the keys, all in the usual place, all actual clickable buttons.
It doesn't have RSI-inducing wrist-rests.
It isn't colored like a rainbow.
It doesn't bend in contortionist ways.
It doesn't have a "shutdown" button you accidentally hit every once in a while.
I've been through multiple iterations of this "cheapest MS keyboard", and they're all good.
(When MS software finally croaks, their hardware division will still be going strong).
Some other brands have similar keyboards too, also cheap and also better than the more expensive keyboards.
With keyboards, as you go up in price, you go down in usability.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It will be great if all keyboard can have the exact number of key everywhere. And only change the position of the characters according the language, but all have the same number and sizes of keys. Ex: Latin America has a big "enter" key, which in the US is smaller, because the US has a extra key over the "enter" key. I don't care which layout is better, but it will be great to have the same keyboard keys size everywhere.
:)
There is also a nag that Spain has a different kind of keyboard of Spanish Latin America. Why they don't just merge it together to single one
The only thing I would ever want from a laptop is a keyboard that's in the ergonomic 'split' style. Yes that would be butt-ugly and probably make the laptop itself the size of an elementary school desk, but with RSI issues I can't type on a standard keyboard for very long. Yes you can plug a standard ergo USB keyboard into a laptop, but that setup requires a desk as it is too big for my lap. Since I'm desk bound with that, I just use the desktop computer I already have.
Meanwhile, I'm noticing that decent ergo kbs are getting scarce for desktops too. Back 10 or 15 years ago there were dozens of brands and all of them cheap and good, now there are only 2 or 3 to chose from with crappy key layouts and they last about a year or so.
do() || do_not();
No. You WANT to notice that. It's confirmation bias. You already have the erroneous subconscious opinion that blacks commit more specific crimes, as such you only notice those instances that support your internal bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Personally, I tend not to use my laptop keyboard much. Instead I put the laptop on a folding stand to raise the monitor height and use an external keyboard and mouse. One reason for this is ergonomics; I get less neck strain and can choose a keyboard I like. But the primary reason is that I wear keyboards out. After about eighteen months or so the keycaps are falling off and the identifying marks on them are a distant memory. That's a little more frequently than I like to change laptops and it's a pain to replace laptop keyboards. I haven't had a laptop keyboard that has stood up to two years of use since IBM was making the T series laptops.
Anyhow, my lightweight folding stand and compact keyboard fit into my laptop case. I hardly ever use the laptop's built-in keyboard, but even so the control key caps are falling off.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I agree, the ever changing keyboard layout is frustrating. The worst ever offender is macbook keyboards where they made the power button a keyboard button (and in the worst place, where a 'del' or 'backspace' button should be).
However, the keyboard linked in the article actually has some nice ideas, for example replacing the totally useless caps lock with 'home' and 'end'. It would be a great keyboard for programmers.
.
I'm not sure about the rest of it, but I HATE the caps lock key. I NEVER use it. I'm glad someone has thought about how it's mostly a nuisance these days for typing in passwords, especially on a crowded laptop keyboard where it's easy to miss-type and hit a key without knowing it. Seriously, who uses freaking caps-lock?
(Oh, and why yes, I am a software developer and use all kinds of strange keys, but certainly not caps lock). ~ occasionally, but not enough to get me cranked off. I also certainly don't expect a hardware maker to cater to the needs of the 1 person in several thousand that writes software for a living. I run linux too, but I rarely use the function keys. I really have rather a rare need to go to a text console.
Frankly I think it's people like this guy that hold back any sort of innovation. The standard keyboard layout is archaic, and has needed to change for years. People that use computers these days are everyday people who don't need a freaking scroll lock key. The laptop I'm currently using has home and end on the top right, and doesn't have a scroll lock key at all. I didn't even notice that until just now and have had the laptop for a year. My only real complaint is it's too tight, and not comfortable. But it's a very small laptop that's light and really portable (perfect for travel, or just having a spare machine I can grab in my bedroom when I need it).
AccountKiller
...what people do, as LONG AS THEY REMOVE THE CAPS LOCK! Yes, I typed that holding shift. The first thing I've done on every KB since 1998? REMOVED THE CAPS LOCK! Yes, I'm a programmer, yes my #DEFINE are in caps, yes, I type my SQL in CAPS. No, I'm not going to cry about my first-world problem of NEEDING TO HOLD DOWN SHIFT! It's easy to train your pinky to hold it-- it becomes natural real quick.
Give me an easy way to permanently (and independent of the OS in use) disable the CAPS LOCK key. That is all I ask.
People should learn to sit properly, and type properly. This greatly increases health and mechanical efficiency. It is from poor mechanical efficiency and techniques that stress the body that injuries and wear-and-tear come. Fixing this is a matter of training: stretches like Yoga, on a daily basis, movement like Taiji, again practised daily, studing how one moves in activities they do regularly and striving to understand and refine them, like the way a concert pianist develops from a beginner to what you see perform on stage. There is no substitute for proper learning, whether a special chair or a weird keyboard. If you can't sit properly, a fancy chair won't fix that. If you can't type reasonably effortlessly and with a minimum of stress, changing the keyboard layout won't help. At best a new layout can give you a few percent improvement in speed, but that is unimportant: time spent learning a new layout should instead be spent improving basic posture and technique, and proper posture and technique will give sufficient speed on a standard layout.
Obviously if you can't be bothered to learn and practice and improve, you won't develop in terms of posture and technique, and this short-sightedness and laziness is endemic in the West, and is exacerbated by pressures to do more and more in ones job. But work pressures will not magically make things better, and work pressures plus strange keyboard will not do so either.
John_Chalisque
Messing with keyboard layouts is not something to be taken lightly. Just like you wouldn't reverse the break and gas pedals on a car, moving keys around on the keyboard should not be done trivially. That said, the caps lock key is in one of the most easily accessible locations on the keyboard, and its one of the keys we use the least. It should be moved, and replaced with one we use more often. Personally, I'd like to see a new modifier key here. One thing I have done in the past, is to re-map my caps lock key to alt, which can be done with a Windows registry setting. This makes using key combinations much easier, which is nice when you're playing WoW and need as many keyboard shortcuts as you can get.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
http://www.pckeyboard.com/
You will buy one, once. It will last you the rest of your life, or, until USB disappears, which ever comes first.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Funny, I'm the complete opposite. My pinky finger can't even reach the bottom-left corner of my keyboard without causing cramps, so for me it's the perfect place to stash the one key that I don't use while touch typing.
I use a Happy Hacker at home. I use a QWERTY at work and also often need to use BE AZERTY as that is standard where I live. (This is different from e.g. FR AZERTY that I also have used)
The portable I use is again a little bit bit different. And obviously the phones are different as well in layout.
I also have a RT MKW01 that I use for watching movies.
To work, I hate keyboards from a portable and if I can help it, I will always connect a 'real' keyboard to it, no matter what the layout is.
From experience I know that people can adapt very easy as long as you are willing to learn.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The original IBM PC keyboard --- and most of the clones (say Keytronic) -- had all their function keys on the left-hand side. I recently ran across one of the WordPerfect function key overlays that slipped over those left-hand keys.
My beef with the Sun keyboards was the mushiness. Oh yeah,.. and the freakin' optical mouse. (I still have an Ultra60 with one of those.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Anyone who is in love with the Caps Lock key is obviously fucking insane and deserves to be ignored.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Turning the proprietary mats 90 when leaving the Sun lab at uni caught out so many people it never got old...
Is it me out does the degree sign only appear in textareas on Android?
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
The manchild who wrote that article needs to take a time-out and grow up a little. It's not like he's talking about Dvorak v. Qwerty or any kind of radical redesign (like we're seeing on on-screen phone/tablet keyboards). It's just trying to figure out what works.
This is hardly something new. In the early days of the Personal Computer, IBM went through some changes trying different keyboard layouts. The original PC/XT keyboard had the arrow/Home/End/PgDn/PgUp/Del/Ins keys overlaid with the numeric keypad (requiring that now-pointless Num Lock key). The AT gave us an Enter key that also covered the current location of the Backslash key. The 101 keyboard of the PS/2 made further changes. Most of them were improvements, and I'm glad we had them.
And portable-computer manufacturers have been doing the same kinds of innovations/experiments since the original Compaq: trying to figure out how to fit all the functions of a full-size keyboard in a smaller space. He's just noticed this now? The dozen cursor-control keys are found in dozens of different places on different laptops. Buy the ones you like, don't buy the ones you don't. I hate having a Fn key in the lower left where Ctrl should be, so I avoid those. Meanwhile I will reward with my money any manufacturer who banishes that big useless harm-causing Caps Lock key.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
But what is their crime rate relative to their socioeconomic status? That's the single biggest predictor of criminal propensity known within any racial demographic, and blacks are far more likely to be in the high-risk regions - those in the top and bottom ranks commit far more crimes per capita than the bulk of humanity, and of course those at the top are rarely held accountable unless their victims are similarly privileged.
You also are seeing the results of a bias in enforcement - there's a lot more blacks than whites arrested for marijuana possession for example, but that's not because whites are less likely to use marijuana or even less likely to get caught, it's because whites are far more likely to escape with a stern warning or a slap on the wrist.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
My laptops are all laid out in Dvorak. All the workstations I use are qwerty ( funny to type on a Dvorak ). I have no trouble switching between layouts, and find the advantages of the Dvorak layout were worth the effort.
Unicomp bought the machines to build the old IBM keyboards, they are the only ones I use. Here is the best keyboard available today: http://pckeyboard.com/page/UKBD/UB40P4A
The main differences are that the F(n) keys don't work the same as before, and caps lock (which he admits is overused in discussion) is replaced with home and end keys (though caps lock still exists, just not with its own giant key). The vast majority of all typing actions are exactly the same as they always have been. If he's really concerned about being able to use those functions, I'm surprised he would be satisfied with the movement of a laptop keyboard at all; most programmers I know prefer the feel of an external keyboard for their professional work.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I've been using the Truly Ergonomic ( https://www.trulyergonomic.com/ ) keyborad for well over a year now. It's totally different from a normal keyboard. I'm also using a blank-keycap one, in dvorak mode, with some personal key-changes.
I love it being different. I love the way that it's different -- columnar arrangement, tab, backspace, enter down the middle, home-row shifts, delete mirroring escape.
It took a whopping two weeks to get used to the new layout. Much like it took me two weeks to switch from qwerty to dvorak fifteen years ago. And I've no trouble bouncing back and forth to "normal" keyboards when necessary.
More important that how I feel, is how I feel. My fingers move a lot less, I type much more fluidly, I'm much more comfortable, and long days feel the same as short days.
I welcome new designs and layouts. You're not forced to use the ones that you don't like. Which is good, because otherwise I'd be forced to use a qwerty keyboard -- you know, the one designed to be horrible to use. The author might want to focus on that problem first.
Anything innovative? At all? I mean I know switching standards sucks, but having DVDs instead of VHS tapes sure is nice. This is how improvement works, unfortunately.
That is interesting. I have had the opposite experience. When you say "in fact" did you mean that you read some study or got doctor's advice indicating that the strain was increased by switching to ergo? Or was that just your experience?
Rudeness isn't productive. Misunderstandings are common in an online format, where would all of us be if everyone reacted the way you did? Well, I will take a lesson and try to phrase better in the future. But in this case if I had, I would have missed out on the useful data that you're a dickhead.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Probably because I modified the original phrasing and failed to update the article preceding it.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What did I do that was rude?
I consider passive-aggression the #1 problem of this society today.
It's akin to you posting child porn and no one else has pointed that fact out.
Futurist Traditionalism
Another chance to say my favorite sentence.
"IBM Model M, the only keyboard you can use to kill a man, then type his obituary."
Mine was made in 1995, and the silkscreening on the letters hasn't even started to rub off.
Get two, small, $10 keyboards.
Put them on your desk so they are in the right place for your hands.
Type as normal- takes 30 seconds to adapt and get back to full speed.
Hand pain heals or is prevented in the first place.
Move the keyboards around in a small radius as the day goes by (an inch left-- an inch right)-- this prevents your extensers and flexors from locking in one position.
Tilt as needed with sticky pads.
Best "keyboard" I ever owned. Recommended it to friends. Those who tried it converted.
Basically the set up looks like
Monitors /=Desk=\
-/====\
You
Slanty things are the keyboards.
You only use half of each keyboard.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How many data points do you have that support such a broad statement?
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
The article on Ars Technica missed the worst thing about the new ThinkPad keyboard: what happened with the Caps Lock function.
To enable Caps Lock, you press the Left Shift key twice.
That's right, one press less than what is required for invoking Sticky Keys under Windows - which everyone hates because it gets invoked when you don't want it. Expect a shitstorm from angry Thinkpad users who will buy laptops with this keyboard.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
What you ask for already exists, its made by Unicomp using the original IBM designs and patents.
I didn't think Lenovo could get much worse than the 6-row abomination that that they foisted on the T-series fans. At least on the T-series you still have the whole caps-lock key that can be remapped to Control. Scattering keys like they've been doing for the past few years is inexcusable. I've enjoyed Thinkpads up to the T420, but no further. This is why my next laptop will not be a Thinkpad or Lenovo of any kind.
I have a HP/Compaq laptop where they "improved" the keyboard by adding a column of keys to the left of ctrl/shift/caps lock/tab/esc.
The added row of keys are useless things like "open print control panel" "start calculator". It took my muscle memory months not to be starting the printer whenever I wanted to press ctrl.
There were ways to disable all but one of the extraneous keys, but no way to map them to anything useful.
That one ergonomic horroshow has put HP/Compaq off my preferred supplier list forever.
The only improvement laptop keyboards need really bad, is to be swapped with the touchpad. When I use a mouse, I very naturally extend my hand to do so. When I type, I tend to naturally rest my wrists on the table immediately in front of the keyboard. When I rest my writs on a #!@!%$#@! laptop while typing, the cursor goes wherever on the screen and very unfortunate things happen. Actually keeping my hand closer to me to use the touchpad feels unnatural. Why are they designe this way universally? I never understood. A layout with the touchpad above the keyboard instead of below it would feel much more natural.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Fuck you, racist.
FC Closer
Accidentally hit enter instead of backslash on an old keyboard. It had an L shaped enter instead of rectangular. That accident meant deleting all of my logical volumes on a big storage array instead of just the one I was trying to. I was very grateful for the automatic backups Linux LVM makes when you delete volumes as I had not yet made my own backup since adding a couple new logical volumes.
The only nice feature I found on keyboards during the last decade is to have a USB slot on the keyboard itself. That way you do not have to go under the desk to plug a USB key in the PC.
I used to be a ThinkPad user. My first 3 notebooks were ThinkPad. However, 3 years after Lenovo take it from IBM, ThinkPad was changed beyond recognition. Beside the toughness of ThinkPad and a little red track point, I love ThinkPad's keyboard layout. It is the most desktop like layout I ever found.
Now, I have no reason to buy ThinkPad and blindly compare specification from many brands. This time the winner is Samsung. (Though it has horrible keyboard layout because they try too much to mimic Apple's layout.)
2007: The T61p. I *still* use mine. I'm typing this post from it. It has the best layout and the best feeling keys I've ever used on a laptop. I especially like the placement of the arrow keys and "back page/fwd page" keys in a 3x2 grid, and the Insert|Delete|Home|End|PgUp|PgDn block. ONLY ONE improvement possible: swap the Fn and Ctrl key on the left side of the keyboard. There are firmware hacks that do this. I'm hoping Lenovo puts out a new model with this keyboard before my T61 dies, or at least before *I* die... but I don't expect that it'll happen. But I keep wishing.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
So when you press the [F5] key (good old refresh) the damn thing does a Suspend instead. And then there are all the other weird features it enables that are of no use.
I'm still trying to work out what to fscking do with it - basically it's unusable. About all I can think of is dropping it into a blender and feeding the debris to the fool who thought a non-standard keyboard is a good idea.
My biggest nitpick (as I type of one of these computers) is keyboards that look the same but have funciton keys in different places. I contract for two companies, one uses Dell and the other uses Lenovo. Lenovo puts the Fn key in the lower left and Ctrl to the right of that, Lenovo reverses them. I've always used Ctrl-F4 to close tabs, guess what happens when I'm going betwen those two computers and Fn-F4 is used for sleep? Bye-Bye programs with network licensing that requires always being connected...
I'm glad Lenovo went back to the (IMHO) proper layout of Ctrl in the lower left when i bought my last personal laptop from them... but this kind of makes it even worse when I go back to my work Lenovo and find Fn down there.
Have you tried it for a month? I went blue, so it's quite clicky, the feedback's perfect..
Hispanics represent the biggest slice of the poor class nowadays. Also, you suggested that blacks are more likely to be extremely rich or extremely poor, which I don't see much proof of (the former).
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
No, I suggested that extremely rich or poor *people* are more likely to commit crimes - and since a disproportionate number of poor people are black, you would reasonably expect that a disproportionate number of "poor people crimes" would be committed by blacks. Just as you would expect a disproportionate number of fraudulent bankers and treasonously corrupt politicians to be white - because that's the color of most bankers and politicians. Not that racial differences might not exist, but until you've corrected for other factors which are known to powerfully bias the behaviors in question your data is useless.
As for poor hispanics, I've known plenty who I wouldn't trust in a dark alley. Plenty of poor white folks too for that matter. I wouldn't be surprised though if Hispanics turned out to have a disproportionately low criminal propensity - one of the major contributing factors to criminal activity is being raised without strong supportive parenting influences. And while Hispanics are at least as bad as anyone else at starting families before they're ready, they have a long tradition of multi-generational households where the elders take responsibility for most of the child-rearing, so they don't really have to be ready. Grandma has the benefit of a lot more life experience to help her parent wisely than most young couples have between them.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Oh come on, you can troll better than *that*.
>White people are FORCED to live with non-whites, agree?
Disagree. There's plenty of all-white communities out there, if you want to live in one go right ahead. If a black person moves into the neighborhood you're free to move elsewhere.
If you want to claim you're being FORCED to tolerate other people moving into other property that you have ZERO legal interest in, and that you should instead be allowed to force them to stay away, then I'd turn the question around - why shouldn't black people be allowed to force *you* to stay away, or even force you to move if they don't like living near a racist? Easy enough I'd think - because it's *your* property, and the government is going to demand a pretty big justification to force you out. Or alternately to force you *not* to sell to a black person.
And I'm not moving to Haiti because the government and infrastructure is a travesty. On the other hand much of Africa and Asia might be quite nice in another century or two, once they've had as long to recover from British colonialism as we've had in the US.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Cherry has a low profile mechanical switch, called Cherry ML, but even that would require a laptop to be significantly thicker than modern laptops typically are.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Every convention on a modern computer keyboard is there because of a gradual process of innovation. Some things are for the best, like the inverted "T" arrow layout, and some things are for the worse, like rubber dome membrane actuation, cylindrical keycaps, and pad printing.
There is plenty of good innovation from the DIY community, see deskthority.net (workshop section) for some great examples.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Green! Green! Green!
Aw hell, ok, beggars can't be choosers. I guess blue will do in a pinch. ;-)
Almost two years ago I bought a new laptop. My choice fell upon an Asus K53. The thing has been doing some heavy-duty work, and I love its brown, aluminium case. BUT the keyboard is a chicklet one, and is absolutely horrible. So I began looking for THE ultimate keyboard, once more. I tried the classic IBM clickety-click keyboard, clones of that one. I had an old sysadmin dig out a keyboard from 1986 which was so heavy you could actually throw it at a cow and kill the beast with its sheer weight. I used that one for some months, at home ( after I had found a DIN-to-PS/2 adapter cable, of course ). It drove my girlfriend nuts, being louder than a mechanical typewriter.
Then, one day, I walked into a shop and saw a shiny black monster. It had Cherry MX blue switches, the ones that provide tactile and hearable feedback. It weighed in at a hefty 1.385 kilograms. Once my fingers rested upon it, they seemed to be physically invited to fly through the standard text I had come to use to test keyboards, making my typing speed flirt with the 100 wpm barrier. It had five programmable macro keys, on the far left. I bought it for what I then thought was a staggering price: € 120 ( US $ 162 ).
It still sits, looming blackly, on the simple white table I use for work. It is a Razer BlackWidow, a gaming keyboard. I use it for programming, browsing, writing emails - anything. It is wonderfully solid, and will prolly last for 20 years. I am thinking of buying an extra one, as one day Razer will certainly stop producing them, and leaving it in its original boxing, just to have a spare item for this wonderful, wonderful tool.
But it took a lot of patient searching, well worth the time and frustration. Now I pity the people who, at work, get a Dell laptop or workstation with a 4 euro piece of plastic as their main productivity tool, with which their hands have to deal for hours and hours and days and days.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Very interesting idea. Consequently, Space is the only key you don't hit in combination with shift (except for gaming), tough if you do it right you should still be able to hit both simultaneously.
I'm waiting for the day when consumers can layout their own keyboards. We already have custom-fittings for earplugs, car seats (luxury only at this point), clothing, safety equipment and much more. Why not computer hardware?
The best solution is to just replace your laptop with something more modular. Get a NUC, or some other small portable computer of the like, an external, usb-powered monitor (look up GeChic), and just use your preferred keyboard. being able to use my HHKB without any keyboard redundancy getting in the way of seeing my screen is the best, and it costs a good deal less as well, as repairs can be made by just replacing a single part rather than getting a new laptop or having to send it in to the manufacturer.
make it simple. 8 bit character set; 4 fingers on each hand.... what could be logical? you don't see piano players having a different key for each chord. you put it together by playing one note with each finger. if people can memorize the fingering for all those chords, they can sure memorize the bit fingering for the ascii character set. and that leaves the thumbs free for the control and windows/apple keys.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.