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Ask Slashdot: Which Laptop Has The Best Keyboard?
Slashdot reader Rock21k is thinking of replacing an old laptop. But...
All newer laptops seem to have wide spacing between the keyboard keys, which I hate... At one time, this used to be for consumer laptops but most major companies have done it for business laptops as well... Probably over time I might get used to it, but definitely not the first choice. I understand I can use an external keyboard but that defeats the purpose of a laptop!
Do you also hate wide spacing between keyboard keys? Which brand do you find least annoying? Leave your best answers in the comments. Which laptop has the best keyboard?
Itâ(TM)s terrible.
Thinkpads, pre-*30 series.
I love my razerblade keyboard. I got the 14" 4k model.
I don't think the macbooks have changed their spacing in a long time. Personally I like a full sized keyboard, but I also find the macbook typeable on when needed. A nice blend of not perfect and not so small I can't use it.
Wide spaced keys are closer to a desktop keyboard layout.
Manufacturers consider this a feature, not a problem.
The smaller the laptop, the tighter the key spacing. If you want tight keys, you need to look at a small screen.
Most wireless keyboards have tight key spacing. You might look at those.
I'm still waiting for a laptop with an ergonomically shaped keyboard (and a corresponding concave screen to match, so that you can close the lid ;) )
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I have a Thinkpad through work. A few years ago they upgraded us to the newer versions with the chiclet-style keyboard. I thought I would hate it, but it actually isn't bad at all. Never thought I'd say that about one of those.
IBM ThinkPad 701c "butterfly" keyboard
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Alienware has the best non-mechanical keyboard in a laptop. You can go mechanical in an Titan and drop 3k is you're only other open.
I've had two Alienware laptops in a row - both for work - and no other non mechanical keyboard comes close.
I've been using it for over a year now and still like it.
For me, it's ThinkPad or nothing, just for the keyboard. I cannot stand modern laptop keyboards. I still use an X220 specifically for the keyboard, and greeted with great joy the news that there will soon be a new, classic-style ThinkPad release.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
Studies made in þe olde typewriter era have shown that having a wider surface on top of the keys leads to more unintentional key presses.
The standard surface width is 1/2" or 12 mm, and with standard width (what is usually meant when talking about "key spacing") being 3/4".
I think that what Rock21k is actually referring to is what is called "island keys" or "chiclet" keys.
I don't think that whether the keys' skirts are angled or go straight down matters that much. The problems are rather that chiclet keyboard tend to have flatter surfaces but more often entirely flat, wider surfaces and less key travel than other keyboards.
MacBook "Pro"'s keyboards with its ultra-flat "butterfly" scissor mechanism is especially bad.
Also, some popular chiclet laptop keyboards (such as MS Surface "Type Cover") have very low surface friction, so fingers slip more often.
Low surface friction wouldn't have been so detrimental to keyboard feel if the keys had been dished and had more space between them.
Older keyboard keys tended to be made of plastic, such as ABS or PBT which has good surface feel even when glossy but backlit keys tend to be painted with a slippery paint layer with laser-ablated legends.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
The Thinkpad T25 anniversary model has a recreation of the best keyboard of all time, however, key travel is slightly less than the golden-era thinkpads of 1995-2025. Still, Lenovo has decided that 1M+ customers (all of them complaining) could not be *totally* wrong, so they have reiussed 5,000 of these laptops, now on sale, with a 940MX GPU, 16GB of RAM, and ability to have 13+ hours of battery life. Get one while you can!
https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/ThinkPad-25/p/22TP2TTTP25
It is not too hard to find a 15%-off discount (several large corporate customers have the code for employee purchases) so the price becomes about $1620.
I like spacing between my keys personally since it helps reduce mistypes. Also, if the action mechanism is good, then accidentally hitting the edge of a key shouldn't trigger a stroke, so a little spacing helps in those cases as well.
There are 4 things I find important in most keyboards I use. Travel, key face shape, spacing, and mechanism; in that order of importance for me. Travel and mechanism are closely related most of the time though, but mechanism affects the "feel of action-ing" the key and there is a lot of psychology in that I think. I find key shape is pretty important as well. On keyboards with flatter key faces, I tend to mistype a lot and and have trouble centering on the keys.
My favorite recent laptop keyboard is the MacBook Pros from around 2011 up till the most recent iteration. The new keyboards are horrendous. Ignoring the oversized trackpad, which I think is just ugly, the new keys have even less travel and the prior MBPs, which were pretty low to begin with but not bad. The scissors mechanism is also pretty mushy as a result.
If Apple could pair their key design with the old IBM Thinkpad (before Lenovo) keyboard mechanisms, then that would be the best of both worlds I think. The old Thinkpad keyboards had a really nice feeling and feedback, but the key design was horrible. They were bunched next to each other so mistypes were common and they were "hemispherical" instead of being pits that your finger went into.
I never understood why nobody ever made a laptop that replicated a desktop keyboard, exactly (well, get rid of the number pad, I don't care about that). Instead we get decades of cramped, uncomfortable keyboards. The worst being those obnoxious chiclet keyboards that those narcissistic hipsters at Apple somehow got the industry to jump on board re laptops (and even a lot of desktops nowadays).
yeah
They cant get a keyboard right to save their life. The ctrl and function keys are bloody backwards!
The 25th anniversary ThinkPad. You'll pay more for it than you would a comparable machine, but it has a 2007 era ThinkPad keyboard rather than the more modern ThinkPad keyboards (the P50 and X1 Carbon have great keyboards, but without the travel of the 25th Anniversary). If keyboard is really important to you, go with that.
Not certain if the poster meant larger keys (like desktop keyboards) or larger gaps between keys. If the former, then it's a feature to mimic desktop spacing as much as possible. If the latter, I'm not sure what he means "wide" - on a real keyboard, the tops of the keys would have even wider gaps.
In my opinion, the best keyboard on any laptop computer was the Toshiba T1200 keyboard circa 1988. Very much like the IBM Selectric / M-series buckling spring switch keyboards - in a portable form factor. I have yet to find another laptop keyboard that can match the feel and speed of typing possible with that machine. You could beat hell out of it, and it would just keep going. You can read about the T1200 laptop and see images of it here.
In 1988 I was in college, and I want to say I was one of the first, if not first person to use a laptop computer for taking notes in class on my campus (I didn't see ubiquitous laptop use in school until the 1990s). There were PC and Unix workstations and kiosks on campus - but they of course were not portable by any stretch of the imagination.
As for current machines - nothing has come close in terms of keyboard ergonomics.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I never use laptop keyboards. When I have to travel for business purpose (rarely, thank God!) I take a 10-keyless keyboard with me, and if that's not possible, yes I type on the laptop's keyboard if I have to.
For all other cases I have a full sized keyboard connected to my laptop through a port replicator.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
A desktop style keyboard is the "best" keyboard. If you really need a good one then you may as well bring a desktop keyboard with your laptop.
Beyond that it comes down to personal preference and how you type. Just go into multiple computer stores and test different laptop models to see how you like the keyboards.
In may ways this is like asking what the "best" car is without knowing anything about your personal preferences, style, usage, etc.
From PCWorld, "The Predator 21 X features a full-height mechanical keyboard using Cherry MX brown switches. Acer isn't the first laptop maker to integrate full-height mechanical keys, of course, but it's a nice touch. The keys are individually RGB-lit, too. If you don't like the colored WASD keys, Acer includes more sedate black keys in the box." It's probably not the laptop you want, but that seems like the answer to your question in absence of additional constraints.
Insert self-referential sig here.
The toughbook from panasonic is nice. I keep an old one with ubuntu.
At least that's how it usually plays out for me.
I own an Alienware 17 R4 Signature Edition, and I love the SteelSeries keyboard that is built into the chassis. It feels amazing to type on, even compared to my mechanical keyboard that I use on my desktop! The keys have a nice feel to them, and they have a decent tactility to them overall. I much prefer to type on this keyboard as opposed to other keyboards I have used in the past, like this Lenovo Thinkpad T430 I am using to write this post, it has the new-style chicklet keyboard, and I just don't think it compares to the Alienware's keyboard in any way, shape, or form. In all honesty I prefer the older Lenovo Thinkpad T420 keyboard, as it was much easier to press those keys and they don't hurt my fingers or hands in any way like the newer (yet still ancient) Thinkpad T430's keyboard. Although price-wise, I damn well better be getting the best keyboard in the world with the Alienware 17 R4, as it is definitely not cheap. I have yet to try typing on most other keyboards, but I can say that the Acer keyboards, Dell keyboards, Lenovo keyboards, and Macbook keyboards just don't have the kind of feel that I like them to have, and the Alienware outperforms them in all aspects, including tactility, fatigue, depression measurement, and key-coating. My typing on my Alienware is much more efficient than my old Dell Inspiron's keyboard for sure.
MSI titan or Razer's new gaming laptop, both have good mechanical keyboards like a desktop. Both come at a steep price.
Gotta be those classic Thinkpads with the best keyboards
Although, I'd love to use a laptop with a built-in IBM model M buckling spring "clicky" keyboard - just to annoy everyone in the coffee shop.
Pity we'll probably never see one.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Get the laptop you like, but get one with USB-C. Reasoning as follows;
I really consider the keyboard of most laptops to be "good enough". Would I want to work a full day on it? I don't want to, but in a pinch I could. I'd rather walk up to my desk at work or in my private office. With USB-C, you hook up a single cable and everything is connected: power, monitor, mouse, and a decent keyboard that's good on the ergonomics.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
The butterfly keyboards on the new MacBooks are complete and total trash, but the keyboard on ca. 2013 MacBook Pros are wonderful.
RIP, Apple.
The iPad Pro.
I am FAR more productive with a ThinkPad X220 or T420 than I am with more modern laptops, because I can touch-type without ever looking at the keyboard. This is achieved by having various key sizes and spacings, which tell me exactly where on the "map" I am at any given moment. Lenovo shit the bed by switching to the 6-row keyboard with equally-spaced function keys and non-discoverable special characters, but they may be now going back to the old-and-awesome 7 row classic keyboard. The T25 is a fist step, here's hoping all their new models will have it.
Of course, if you're a donk that needs looking at his keyboard every 5-10 seconds, then you won't understand what's all the fuss about. I notice that those same donks need shit like backlit keys, because without them they are utterly lost while typing in the dark. And spend lots of time looking dimwitted.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
like asking which crack whore will give you the best gonorrhea.
Even as the trend to reduce key travel has continued the Thinkpad keyboards still feel great.
An A4 page is portrait, a web page is portrait, a laptop should be portrait.
The screen should be wide enough to view the page and as long as practical. BUT a laptop is portrait because of the keyboard.
So the physical keyboard is the problem. So any attach keyboard for an iPad Pro because that can be orientated vertically while the keyboard is still horizontal, making it a better laptop.
The idiots over in Google just crippled their tablets by putting them in a laptop clamshell with a landscape orientation.... worse you're supposed to pick up the whole thing for portrait and pretend the keyboard isn't there. Idiotic thinking.
All laptop keyboards suck!
I understand where the OP is coming from, but realize that "gaming" keyboards are all like this. They are replicating the spacing of a desktop keyboard rather than anything else.
Only "gaming" type of laptops have this. Most shittier cheap consumer laptops have shrunken Function keys or mangle the Enter/Shift keys (European types) and I hate those more than I hate my Lenovo keyboard which I feel is reasonable.
My old Toshiba from 2004 had a much nicer keyboard, but I can't take it with me.
Typing this on a Lenovo T420, this is the only answer. If you need something newer, get a T25.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I just got a new keyboard 2 days ago. It's a Logitech K800*. At first I didn't like it because the keys were closer together than the old Saitek keyboard I had used for years. I usually take the attitude that a keyboard is just a keyboard anyway.
But after about a day of using this new one and getting used to it I have found I actually type better.
To check my perception I just pulled out a ruler and measured the distance between the left edge of the "Q" key and the right edge of the "P" key on the Logitech, the Saitek and an old Toshiba laptop. Despite what I thought they're all very close to equal in distance - any difference is barely perceptible with the ruler I used.
The biggest difference seems to be how low a profile a laptop's keys and the logitech's keys have compared to the Saitek.
But why would you judge a laptop solely on its keyboard? I used to be a road warrior and I lugged my laptop all over the country but I adapted to whatever keyboard my laptop had.
At home or in my cubicle though I have almost always have used an external keyboard. It's just too much to carry when you travel but if I really hated my laptop's keyboard that much I would have.
* - sorry if I sound like a shill for Logitech. I know everyone hates them for what they tried to do with their Harmony remote. I've used their trackballs for half my life and I love them. I would be upset if you made me use a mouse.
And another thing. (possibly wandering off topic, sorry)
Why are computers sold with keyboards and a mouse anyway these days. A week ago I woke up to a dead laptop and in desperation I went to Walmart and bought an HP desktop. It was desperation that drove me to that choice, but why did it come with a mouse and a keyboard but NO speakers?
HP couldn't even include a shitty speaker inside their computer? But they insist on giving me a keyboard and mouse that I will NEVER use? WTF?
I know, some people would be pissed off if they spent $500 on a computer and they got it home and realized they had no keyboard but there's also a good reason I didn't buy a monitor with it - because I already had one. They were in fact selling computers with monitors all wrapped up neatly in one box.
I guess the reason they can't package and sell the keyboards/mice separately is a marketing decision. People would get freaked out if they had to start buying accessories? (just a guess). Besides, keyboards and mice are so cheap they're practically disposable.
Not sure why parent was downvoted, because I think the point about the numeric keypad is quite valid. If a laptop has a numeric keypad, the rest of the keyboard will not be centered, and what is worse, the touchpad will not be centered.
When I ordered my lenovo they did not offer an option without a numeric keypad. I would have paid extra money to get rid of it, but the option was just not available.
Hey lenovo, are you listening? Why do you think a Macbook Pro has no numeric keypad? Litte hint: It's not because Apple is cheap or because their developers are retarded.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Preferably one that clicks.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
I have been in this quest for a long time. Since "good old" ThinkPad keyboard disappeared after T/W/X-20 series, I have tried to find modern laptop with a great keyboard. Latest ThinkPad keyboard is not as great as the old one, but it's still one of the best. Specially in models where keyboard travel is big enough like 500-series. Also I recommend trying HP Spectre 13 keyboard. It's surprisingly good for a laptop of that height. It's now one of my favorites, next to Dell Precision keyboard, which has good travel but a bit wobbling feel.
All new Macbook keyboards are vague shadow from the past before MBPr, as they have been lowering keyboard travel since then. Not even mentioning the current keyboard, which is completely awful.
And what about placing "arrow up" right next to "caps" and "page up" so you have a 90% chance of going up a page when you need a capital letter?
>:o
That's it.
From my experience: you might get used to tolerating it but a bad keyboard is a bad keyboard, especially when it has a terrible layout. In such a case it will always be an annoyance to work with.
The Thinkpad 25 seems to be the only acceptable option for a programmer's keyboard right now.
For current day computers I'd give the current MacBooks a try. I've had good experiences with the new Apple keyboards, but some people don't like them at all so YMMV.
If you can get your hands on an older refurbished ThinkPad with the classic keyboard, that might be an option aswell. I just bought one of the last with the classic keyboard and don't regret it the slightest.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Why use a keyboard ? Keyboards are for ludites. Modern people tablets with apps that app apps. Appity app !
I have bough a Lenovo B51-80. It's a good value for your money, and I have few complaints to it. Except that the keyboard contains the numeric keys (num lock, %, *, -, etc...). This makes the rest of the keyboard unaligned to the center of the screen, just like the touchpad. The consequence is that one naturally places the arms aligned, which causes lots of unintentional touches to the touchpad.
Extraordinary keyboard. Deep but not too deep, quiet, and consistent. Thrash away. If you are a punishing typist like me, then you may need to replace it a few times. It's a minor irritation, but the latest one has lasted well over a year.
Lenovo relesead an anniversary edition of the old Thinkpads:
https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/ThinkPad-25/p/22TP2TTTP25
The best laptop keyboard I've used, so good that I bought an external keyboard like that to use it with the new laptops which have a crappy keyboard IMO.
I'd buy one, but it's not available in my country.
If I can't plug in a real keyboard to a laptop my WPM is gonna go way down and mistakes up. I have no idea how some people use laptop keyboards as their main keyboards. The key travel is inevitably crap and the layout is subtly different enough in terms of spacing that my muscle memory will screw stuff up all the time. I love my cherry keyboard. So much so that I bought like 20 of them so I never run out as I destroy like 1 a year. And it has a British layout with a proper big Enter key. :-)
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
this small 12" high-end notebook had a very good keyboard
The following serie R8xx and R9xx are a lot less good
"Give me an IBM Model M keyboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard). . . or give me death!"
And the same old factories (and even a few old timer personnel) are still churning out buckling spring mechanical keyboard under the Unicomp brand name.
(This message was typed using one of these).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Any keyboard with staggered rows, rubber dome switches and frequently used keys under the pinky fingers is bad. True, some are even worse than just "bad", but do yourself a favor and use a keyboard that was actually designed with ergonomics in mind and not just replicating the typewriter interface.
I have the same numeric keypad in my Lenovo, and it's pretty annoying exactly by what grungeman described. The worst part is that, because the touchpad is not centrally aligned, I unintentionally touch it with my left arm.
He wasn't "downvoted", his karma is "terrible" and all his posts *start* at -1.
What about gamer laptops with mechanical keyboards?
And if keyboards are such an issue do as I do. The two places I am the most (home and office) I have a real keyboard sitting on my desk. At home I even have a dedicated screen.
My office it not at the local coffee shop, so not an issue.
If I travel and I know I need to work from my hotel room, I take my (small) keyboard with me. At a remote office I always can steal a keyboard. Just in case, I have a PS2toUSB converter with me all the time.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you can call that laptop
The XO Laptop from the OLCP project has the best keyboard.
It's the only waterproof keyboard I've seen where you can actually clean in completely, so I normally use it for cooking and crafts.
I know some other modern laptops like the Chromebooks have some form of waterproofing in the keyboard, but they are still a pain to clean and you would have to open up the laptop... with the XO is just a simple cleaning with a moist towel and you are done.
I have a rugged Thinkpad 12" around that's still one of the most comfortable laptop keyboards i've ever used.
Of all the keyboards I've used in recent times, The Dell XPS series has the most comfortable keyboard and the most positive key engagement. As to the key spacing, it is a chicklet keyboard, in keeping with the current fashion. But that's where the similarities with most other brands end. Dell seems to have gone through quite a bit of effort to make the keyboard nice. It's the closest thing I've felt to typing on a proper keyboard.
I think the spaces make up for the smaller keys many PC makers use. This allows for similar size but at the same time shrinking keys. Apparently to save on costs? Can't find many keyboards that really do a user justice. Maybe some Lenovo ThinkPad's but their consumer IdealPad's and Yoga's suck. To shallow probably a result of this obsession with thin. Same happened to Apple which had very good keyboards until Apple became obsessed with thin and the MacBook is the worst. I bought a IdealPad and the keyboard is bad and the number pad has such small narrow keys its pretty much worthless.
You might like wider keys and less space, but that does cause more mistyped keystrokes. It's intuitively obvious, but has also been born out in studies. A decent amount of space between keys is extremely important to most good typists...
The Thinkpad 25 is a modern laptop (T470) with an "old style" keyboard very similar to the 2012 Thinkpads.
The best keyboard on a laptop is any laptop into which I plug my clicky IBM keyboard! These keyboards, from back in the PC/XT/AT days, are built like tanks and have the best feel of any keyboard I've ever used. When my last IBM keyboard dies, I'll have to stop using computers.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I have both and am able to type faster and more comfortably on these keyboards that most other devices.
Not too wide, not too narrow and a great feel. They fit my medium size hands well.
my favorite keyboard of all time.
Sorry, I did not even know one's karma can be that low :)
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
It was released a couple of months ago.
That is, if you want a somewhat MODERN system, with a good keyboard. Is a tad expensive, but that's life for you...
Otherwise, go for one of those second hand old computers of yore. Your best bet for a good keyboard is an old laptop.
The quest to make thinner/lighter/smaller laptops has taken it's toll on the keyboards...
Less bessel on the screen means less surface area for the Keyboard (although the move from 4:3 to 16:9 helped a lot in this department), meaning less space and misisng keys.
Thinner and lighter means smaller keys with less travel, and smaller key mechanisms with worse tactile feel.
Me? I use the laptop docked most of the time, which means I use a nice HP Keyboard salvaged from a workstation (PA-RISK ultra 5000). Which has a windows key with a diferent logo, ideal for my mac ;-)
When on the go, I try to survive with the crappy laptop chiclet keyboard.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
The thinkpad keyboards are still great, even after Lenovo acquired the line from IBM. We lost the thinklight a while ago, and the travel is slightly less than it used to be, but they are still the best for typing. I'm typing this on an X260 right now.
That said, the "ideapad" laptops are generally inferior. If you want a laptop with a good keyboard you only have one brand worth looking at - fortunately they have a lot of different models for you.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The Cheetos crumbs have to go somewhere.
Have gnu, will travel.
The Thinkpad T25 anniversary model has a recreation of the best keyboard of all time, however, key travel is slightly less than the golden-era thinkpads of 1995-2025.
Message from the future?
A few months ago I was looking for work and I happened to notice that an edgy dot-com calling itself Purism - er, Puri.sm - was looking for a systems administrator.
I'd been following the Purism story for a few years. Basically, the open source gearheads who'd pushed over the past several decades for an open source operating system - Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, and all the programmers and developers whose shoulders they stood upon - having achieved their goal, were now looking to create open source hardware and an open source BIOS, as well.
Interested in being a part of this, I sent in my resume, but was disappointed to learn that it would be a few months before I heard back. So I turned to other work.
A few weeks ago I got an email from someone at Purism. They were ready to start interviewing and they wanted to do the interviews through some video chat website.
I replied that I ran FreeBSD at home and my laptop didn't have a camera. Was there some way we could just interview on the telephone?, I asked, and provided a few numbers I could be reached at.
I received an email with a proposed date and time. Attached was a calendar file - a ".ics" file, if I recall correctly. Wikipedia says ".ics" is used by iCalendar ... which is not an industry standard, even though they make noises like one. [1]
Because I am a systems security consultant, my electronic mail client is configured to NOT open attachments automatically. After inspecting the attached file, I clicked on it, but my laptop - running the latest release FreeBSD, the Gnome3 X window system, and Thunderbird, with Enigmail functionality compiled in - had no idea what to do with the calendar file that was attached.
I didn't pay that much attention to it, because recruiters often send me calendar attachments - I think it happens automatically - but they always put the appointment information in the body of the email, so I have never had any trouble before.
It turns out that the product manager at Purism didn't bother to tell me that he had completely ignored my request for a telephone call and had just scheduled me for his chat website.
I missed the interview because I was waiting for Bozo to call me. You know, like recruiters have been doing, for decades.
After half an hour, I sent the bozo, uh, product manager, I mean, an email, asking what had happened to the interview - and got a snippy reply that the link to the video chat had been in the calendar invitation.
Honestly, I've never seen such incompetence in my life. Arrogance, yes. Incompetence, no. You'd think this guy was a temp ... not a product manager.
Here, let's think about this.
1) Purism is trying to build a brand new concept laptop, based on open source. [2]
2) Purism is trying to recruit engineers to build the open source laptop.
3) Purism is relying upon file formats and calendaring mechanisms that are not industry standard, to schedule interviews.
(I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only candidate who had difficulties.)
4) Purism is seeking candidates who are using commercial, closed-source operating systems like Windows or MacOS and commercial, closed-source browsers and mail clients running on those operating systems.
5) The evidence this is so can be seen with a little thought experiment involving a candidate running Linux on his or her laptop. This candidate would encounter the same difficulties I did - lack of support for webcams, software that is not tightly integrated into the dominant Windows and MacOS paradigms, uninformative emails from hostile interviewers.
6) And so we see that Purism is actively recruiting people who prefer closed source, to develop their open source product - a fundamental failure from the word 'go'.
7) We also see that Purism is actively prejudiced
For most people looking for a great keyboard, the Macbooks are a non-starter even if they can accept the OS change, because of the half-height arrow keys and lack of spacing between every 4 function keys (or lack of physical function keys on the touch bar models). For some reason this is glossed over in all the MBP reviews. Every PC laptop which dares to commit these transgressions gets dinged for it in all the reviews, but in the Mac reviews it's never mentioned.
The Thinkpads have shrunken their arrow keys slightly compared to their old keyboards. But they remain suitably large for comfortable editing, and the function keys mimic the spaces between every 4 keys like a desktop keyboard for touch typing.
Not when you have bigger concerns like Arrow keys (which ideally should be identical be arranged in a triangle and should have gap space like this. so you can actually feel where they are without looking properly. Not enlarged to gap fill like this. I'd be more concerned about having two alts and two controls because my sister's laptop only has one of one of those and it's a bloody nightmare every time I use her computer. I'm completely keyspacing agnostic. The way i figure it keyspacing helps the keylighting to show up. So I think I might prefer to have it than not. Also I'm medically what you call a giant. So I tend to prefer the larger keyboards for a laptop.
Just another second banana
As a coder, a reserved button for HOME, END, PAGE UP, and PAGE DOWN is nearly essential for me. I recently changed my laptop from a Samsung to a DELL, and have been terribly annoyed that you have to press "Function Left" for Home, etc. Now you have to press 3 buttons and use two hands to move to the beginning of a file when it used to be possible with one hand. Very annoying. Please keep these buttons on a laptop - especially when there are often inches of unused space left and right of the keyboard!
The spacing on the Mac keyboards (USB and the Macbook Pro laptops to be precise) is precision spaced.
I remember reading a study somewhere about how the spacing ratio and the caplet height aspect was designed to keep the hands at
a "natural" orientation for like 85% of use.. so you dont have to "Stretch" to reach common keys and cuff and wrist movement is minimal.
I think the vertical handshake style mice are probably even better but the apple keyboard designs are ace....And while im not a fan of the latest gen USB-C laptop form factor, every other keyboard design in the industry seems superflous, distracting..and possibly hazardous.. im looking at you HP fullsize keyboards)
Bitch you KNOW the side.. WORLD MAFUCKIN WIDE..
It took the slashdot community ages to vote him down. If he has any karma at all he will start posting hundreds of made up anecdotes fishing for stray karma. He also tried hard to get you to follow his amazon referrer links so you get a 24 hour cookie.
He is at -1 for a reason.
This is a creimer post please mod it down. I know this seems like a good post but he will start shitposting if you give him half a chance
Find a brick and mortar shop where they have laptops on display and try them. Thinkpads are usually a good bet.
Keyboards are a personal thing, and what's good for you may not be good for someone else. For example some people like short-travel keys, others despise them. There is also the matter of layout, for example, no one seem to agree where the PgUp, PgDn, Ins, Del, Home, End keys should go. Do you want backlight? a numeric keypad? liquid damage resistance?
I have no problem with wide spacing. This design allow for compact (flat) keyboards to be adequate for casual typing, which is, I think, a good compromise for most people.
I love my Precisions keyboard. Some come with full numeric keypads.
On a side note: Sheldon on Big Bang Theory was for years using an Alienware laptop. This season he is using a Dell Precision.
I've been using laptops with numeric keypads for years and honestly not had any trouble with it, when using it my hands are just centered on the keyboard / trackpad.
The Dell has a great keyboard, IMO. The ASUS keyboard was increadibly crappy for a high-end laptop.
Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
Creimy is posting more than 2 posts a day. Hurry! mod down otherwise /. will go to hell again!
Note: you can mod down even if already at -1 to lower karma and to prevent lost /. users to accidentally mod up.
C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."
But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!
Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.
Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
Creimy's "enterprise-level" chair, he talks about it all the time on slashdot:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...
Creimy's head, while his supervisor was talking to him, not with him, since it is impossible to do with Creimy:
https://school.discoveryeducat...
Creimy acting in educational resource document, he actually confirmed himself on Slashdot that he was handled by Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education! He is really a king Dumpty!:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...
This one's easy. Of current new laptops, the best keyboard hands-down is the ThinkPad Anniversary Edition 25. It's essentially a very slightly improved T420/X220/W520 keyboard.
My other favourites:
- ThinkPad X220/T420/W520
- ThinkPad T40/T60
- Apple PowerBook 12/15
- HP Mini 2133 and 2140 (Seriously. Great little keyboards.)
only ThinkPads
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Alienware has a nice keyboard which is not island style and feels really nice when typing.
The one my administrative assistant uses once I get an administrative assistant.
a) None of them.
b) I really wish they'd stop moving the delete key around.
c) I have big hands, which trip over the trackpad as I'm typing. Some laptops have a switch to disable, but they're usually gamer laptops and I'm not a gamer. I'm sure manufacturers spend a lot of time envisioning interesting things that can happen when you stroke the trackpad certain ways, but it's entirely lost on me.
d) The extent to which a laptop keyboard is bearable is in direct relation to the amount of tactile feedback. In the quest for thinness, we're losing sight of that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The Toshiba Portege R100 was great, but later models have a rather mediocre chiclet keyboard.
The only decent chiclet keyboard I ever found is a Google Chromebook. Even the Microsoft Surface does not come close.
It took me years to finally figure this out, in my own context.
On my desktop, long ago, I switched my mouse to my left hand, to bring it closer to my physical centerline (and reduce shoulder strain). My mouse is centered on its pad in the same relation to home position as the '4' key on my numeric keypad.
A very common work process is to text select with my mouse (80% of my text selects are double-click to word select—which requires less precise targetting—followed by word-extent drag) after which I need to change window focus (via the mouse), then paste, then type. Since I need to type, for the paste I almost always use CTRL-V instead of mouse-menu paste. (My right hand is loitering at home position, and I've been typing capital letters using both hands since the seventies, but I never employ the right CTRL keys because the right CTRL key is a full two keywidths further away from home position than the left CTRL key—so much further away that my right pinky can't press this key without first leaving home position, despite having a digit reach and Vulcan flexibility that Trump can only dream about.)
When I'm feeling hasty—I'm always feeling hasty—my mouse hand needs to abruptly move from mouse to keyboard to begin typing, starting with CTRL-V. Yet several times on any given day, I end up typing CTRL-B instead. This causes my web browser to open the bookmark screen, an annoying surprise which takes me entirely out of the flow of the moment.
I don't normally have this kind of mistake after moving mouse hand to keyboard for other purposes.
Finally, just a few weeks ago, I figured this out: the left CTRL key has a key top about twice the width of an alphabetic key. This is an old COMPAQ keyboard with properly scalloped key tops. The feedback loop in perfecting my hand motion when orienting initially to CTRL-V is therefore a little bit less precise than for typing a regular :alnum:
Coupled with a small variation in left hand spread, the very short interval between the CTRL and the V key presses (too small for the second phase of subconscious adjustment), and a small amount of chair movement (rotation is the worst), all these minor errors add up to a persistent typing error that annoys the heck out me.
I have many typing errors, but few others identified errors that persist. Most of the rest are purely statistical.
When I type on my wife's iMac, for the entire time, while the characters spill rapidly onto the screen, there's part of my brain going "it's a miracle" or "this can't last". My hands are in a constant state of "I'm lost down here" and "would someone please throw me a bone?" I've never gotten past the gut reaction of marvelling that those keyboards work at all.
My other keyboard is an old ThinkPad T500. I don't mind it at all for regular typing, but I'm never going to become fully automatic and subconscious with the special keys roughly crammed around the periphery. The right edge of the left control key is aligned with the left edge of 'Z', a full keywidth inset from my regular desktop. Unless I slow down to impulse power, my left pinky is constantly double mashing the surrounding Fn or squashy Windows key.
Mobile is like never sleeping in your own bed or being issued a regulation bedroll by the staff Sergeant rather than carefully selecting your own.
Some people like this. Others don't. Some people adapt willingly. Others don't.
I adore my typematrix keyboard, and it's thin enough to fit without a problem in my laptop bag and sits decently on top of my laptop, but I would love a laptop that incorporated it directly.
Long time ago I learned to type in high school and got up to 55WPM on the typewriter....
... tiny or wide spaced keyboards doesn't matter to me... it takes only less than a minute to get used to it.
When I finished college, I was close to 90 which made me pretty efficient at any keyboards
Acer Predator 21 https://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/i...
I'm in the market for a new keyboard. I'm looking for something without the numeric keypad as I'm short on desk space. It must also be wired and have a UK layout. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Why UNIX?
The laptop with the "best" keyboard is one of the ones that has a mechanical keyboard in it. They exist, but it's a bit impractical. Short of that it comes down to how much you're willing to sacrifice in terms of size and weight, and that will be different for everyone.
Downvoted because he has a few enemies that downvote everything. What? You thought slashdot was an escape from petty social media?
No, it was downvoted. And all of his critics here seem to be Anonymous Cowards. Almost like they're stalkers.
Awesome keyboard. I use old school Lenovo for primary machines, but HP has a nice keyboard on the Revolve.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Clearly superior! Too bad noone make a portable with a real keyboard anymore.
Does social media have downvoting?
I can attest that this laptop has the worst keyboard on a laptop I can recall. And that is saying something.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
Yeah because it took close attention to counter his dozen sockpuppet accounts and massive hand delivered spam campaign to monetize everything he does on the internet. It got so bad he was posting dozens of stories, many of which were easily recognized as impossible, just so that he would have more and more amazon links out there.
He admits to all of this. So yeah I don't like asshole spammers. The thing that might not make sense is why he would bother doing this? Sending out spam manually is generally regarded as a waste of times. Not so in his case, he will spend hours searching the ground for unclaimed lotto tickets. To some degree he can't help being an annoying pest, it's his autism.
On the other hand he has some other account that with good karma that he uses to vote up cdreimer posts 5 times when he gets the chance. Nobody knows who the other account is so it's not like he couldn't play by the rules and behave in a manner that doesn't piss off others. He just doesn't want to.
Of course he has had about 12 totally obvious totally annoying sockpuppets.
I don't care, he's much less annoying that the anonymous stalkers.
Here are some posts from creimer's old accounts. I'll start with his love of child brides.
If all my assets were liquidated, I would still have enough cash to buy a new car and head off to Mexico to find a chica to marry.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You're aware that are some states in the U.S. that allow underage marriage as young as 14 years old?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
As for my comment, I've heard stories of engineers retiring at 50, moving to Mexico and marrying underage girls. Since I work with ex-military, the Philippines is a popular retirement spot for marrying underage girls as well. It's all about getting the most bang for your retirement dollars.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
That only works if you retire to Mexico, build a mansion (by local standards), marry an underage sweet thing and bequeath all your possessions to the village.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You need to be more specific. I wrote 3,000+ comments this year.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Nah... I just do it to piss off my trolls and make coffee money off of them.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
We have different priorities. You want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to own the corporate ladder.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Your bitch licks your balls. Most people don't brag about practicing bestiality. Is there a reason why you married a dog and not a goat?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
My employers don't care about what my Slashdot trolls think. Now go off and lick your balls somewhere else.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
iPhone 6s and reduce my monthly bill from $80 to $50. As a phone and a video camera, the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete. As a Sprint customer for 20+ years, Sprint will always offer me a new iPhone if I decide to stop using the 6s as a phone in the next several years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Miracle workers are never afraid to ask for a second opinion. Supervisor gave me his opinion ? and a mess to clean up. Lesson learned from this incident: if something isn't quite broken, break it.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
So you can turn around call me a liar again? People have been playing that game with me for years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Based on what I've read about Uber, he need to tell the boys to clean up their locker room behavior, zip up their pants, and attend sensitivity training until everyone agrees that women are not sexual objects.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Which doesn't violate the Slashdot TOS. If you got a problem with that, take it up with management.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
This year I've posted ~4,000 comments.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the
Chris' case is getting worse, he spends all day replying to himself as AC on /.
The tests we ran on Chris have shown that Chris has the intelligence of an ameba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, technically, he is able to conceive some kind of agenda but it will be silly or impossible to follow on a human scale.
For example, Chris had an agenda to post anything he felt like on Slashdot which did not work well because it was based on his false beliefs that he had an infinite number of karma points as he wrote here several times.
Several people here explained to Chris that karma maxed out at some level like 50 or so but Chris kept on insisting that his python script had confirmed that he had millions of karma points!
Oh well, as I wrote before: "It isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody."
For the valuable /. users that might already have read the following, please note that there is an important update.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education has invested money to buy Chris a new chair:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...
Information about Christopher Dale Reimer and autistic people:
Autistic people have obsessions about things normal people don't care. For example, one of our autistic patient went haywire when he realized that there was a penny missing in his pocket change.
To calm him down, one of our educator pretended to have found it on the floor and gave a penny to him.
The autistic patient condition went even worse because he realized it wasn't the same penny!
Chris has an obsession with budgeting every penny. He doesn't understand that most people do not budget to the penny and have a flexible amount they allow for miscellaneous items.
I am Nancy Guerrero and I am Director of Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. We use Chris' (a.k.a. creimer,cdreimer) picture in our document because he is the hardest case we have ever had to handle:
http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...
Our artists were inspired by the low carb diet that Christopher follows scrupulously for the small lunch box and by the picture linked below for the rest. I am sure that you will notice the similarities such as the bump on the side of his chest and more:
https://ibb.co/gVad65
Please be easy on Christopher although, I am aware that some of our staff handling Chris post joke comments here and obvoiusly, the Santa Clara County Office of Education disapprove that behavior vehemently:
https://school.discoveryeducat...
But it isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody.
Thank You dear users,
---
Nancy Guerrero
Director
Special Education
Santa Clara County Office of Education
Look you're either with us or with the terrorists.
Yeah because it took close attention to counter his dozen sockpuppet accounts and massive hand delivered spam campaign to monetize everything he does on the internet. It got so bad he was posting dozens of stories, many of which were easily recognized as impossible, just so that he would have more and more amazon links out there.
He admits to all of this. So yeah I don't like asshole spammers. The thing that might not make sense is why he would bother doing this? Sending out spam manually is generally regarded as a waste of times. Not so in his case, he will spend hours searching the ground for unclaimed lotto tickets. To some degree he can't help being an annoying pest, it's his autism.
On the other hand he has some other account that with good karma that he uses to vote up cdreimer posts 5 times when he gets the chance. Nobody knows who the other account is so it's not like he couldn't play by the rules and behave in a manner that doesn't piss off others. He just doesn't want to.
Of course he has had about 12 totally obvious totally annoying sockpuppets.
You know that most of this shit is made up in Slashdot echo chamber? ROFL
Safe to say you just like hearing creimer talk sexy about marrying underage sweet things.
I have a number of mechanical keyboards located in various places (home and office) and just plug in KVM wherever I am. I have a tenkeyless model that I can easily fit into my backpack but it weighs three pounds so that's a consideration. It's an absolute pleasure to type on though.
Here are some posts from creimer's old accounts. I'll start with his love of child brides.
If all my assets were liquidated, I would still have enough cash to buy a new car and head off to Mexico to find a chica to marry.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You're aware that are some states in the U.S. that allow underage marriage as young as 14 years old?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
As for my comment, I've heard stories of engineers retiring at 50, moving to Mexico and marrying underage girls. Since I work with ex-military, the Philippines is a popular retirement spot for marrying underage girls as well. It's all about getting the most bang for your retirement dollars.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
That only works if you retire to Mexico, build a mansion (by local standards), marry an underage sweet thing and bequeath all your possessions to the village.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You need to be more specific. I wrote 3,000+ comments this year.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Nah... I just do it to piss off my trolls and make coffee money off of them.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
We have different priorities. You want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to own the corporate ladder.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Your bitch licks your balls. Most people don't brag about practicing bestiality. Is there a reason why you married a dog and not a goat?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
My employers don't care about what my Slashdot trolls think. Now go off and lick your balls somewhere else.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
iPhone 6s and reduce my monthly bill from $80 to $50. As a phone and a video camera, the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete. As a Sprint customer for 20+ years, Sprint will always offer me a new iPhone if I decide to stop using the 6s as a phone in the next several years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Miracle workers are never afraid to ask for a second opinion. Supervisor gave me his opinion ? and a mess to clean up. Lesson learned from this incident: if something isn't quite broken, break it.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
So you can turn around call me a liar again? People have been playing that game with me for years.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Based on what I've read about Uber, he need to tell the boys to clean up their locker room behavior, zip up their pants, and attend sensitivity training until everyone agrees that women are not sexual objects.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Which doesn't violate the Slashdot TOS. If you got a problem with that, take it up with management.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
This year I've posted ~4,000 comments.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the
Hey my friend! Why don't you take it to management as your fetish creimer sex toy dream suggests all along?
Here are some Creimer's posts from his account that was blocked and renamed by Slashdot management:
"Nah... I just do it to piss off my trolls and make coffee money off of them."
https://slashdot.org/comments....
"Which doesn't violate the Slashdot TOS. If you got a problem with that, take it up with management."
https://slashdot.org/comments....
This year I've posted ~4,000 comments.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
We have different priorities. You want to climb the corporate ladder. I want to own the corporate ladder.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
My employers don't care about what my Slashdot trolls think. Now go off and lick your balls somewhere else.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
I have never been satisfied with a laptop keyboard. Laptop keyboards are OK in a pinch, but the only answer for serious typing is to dock.
There is nothing like a desktop keyboard -- be it travel, buckling pressure, curved keycaps, surface friction, f/j bumps, palm support, arrow/function key location, etc.
Chris living in his imaginary world again which most people find weird, twisted and absurd and which Chris accepts as being perfectly normal.
---
Nancy Guerrero
Director
Special Education
Santa Clara County Office of Education
creimer is a fucktard! and so are you at +2 attracting attention to his posts.
Congratulations! we have been pwned by creimer!
You've been posting the same crap for 2+ months. At least creimer has the decency to contribute the discussion.
Then, you are obviosly a fucktard! Just like Creimy-Dumpty! I never had that imaginary/autism problem to have evrything perfectly centered and I ain't as clumsy as creimy either!
Christopher, my love,
Never mind those "hump leg" trolls.
I am deeply sorry. I didn't feel well lately but I am better now since I had my meds adjusted. I am sorry that I called you all sorts of names and I feel truly ashamed of myself.
The python click script you wrote for me my sweet love for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work.
Could you come visit me in my studio so we could look at it?
Signed:
Your sweetee who will love you for ever.
P.S. when I posted there was a funny form that asked me to retype the word "biceps" in a text field. That's funny and I went to look at your new picture again and got turned on. Please contact me ASAP.
Yes, find a modern laptop with a keyboard like older Thinkpads...
You sound bitter, sweet tits.
You know that most of this shit is made up in Slashdot echo chamber? ROFL
What is that supposed to mean?
Nobody told me he was doing all that I witnessed it with my own eyes. I have links to his posts if you wanna see for yourself.
What are you trying to say is "made up"?
Before we go any further here he fantasizes about buying mexican sex slaves. Supposedly the thought was put into his head by exposure to ex-military through his job at the FBI which is just that much more disturbing I have a good mind to report the whole thing.
If all my assets were liquidated, I would still have enough cash to buy a new car and head off to Mexico to find a chica to marry.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11064719&cid=55125199
You're aware that are some states in the U.S. that allow underage marriage as young as 14 years old?
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11064719&cid=55123829
As for my comment, I've heard stories of engineers retiring at 50, moving to Mexico and marrying underage girls. Since I work with ex-military, the Philippines is a popular retirement spot for marrying underage girls as well. It's all about getting the most bang for your retirement dollars.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11064719&cid=55123241
That only works if you retire to Mexico, build a mansion (by local standards), marry an underage sweet thing and bequeath all your possessions to the village.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11064719&cid=55122609
If you're ok with creimer you're ok with buying highschool girls as long as they're poor and brown.
Gotcha
So do you want less trolls or do you want Creimer to move to mexico and marry a high school aged girl?
Why would you approve of creimer's pedophilia?
I've had the... opportunity... to develop on a 2016 era Macbook recently. I actually enjoy the mechanical aspects of the new keyboards: the low travel isn't an issue to me, and the sharp distinction between depressed and released states for the keys plus the relatively loud click on each keypress is an aid to typing. Most other keyboards (including older Macbook keyboards) seem very mushy by comparison. The only issue with the keyboard itself is how tightly spaced the keys are, combined with their low height, it can be difficult to even sense the gap between the keys to orient your fingers.
What's a shame is that these Macbooks have other glaring human interface issues. The touch bar is garbage. The entire point of a keyboard is that you can operate it without looking at it, and while looking at the screen I invariably end up brushing random buttons on the touch bar all day long without intending to. There is no tactile warning or feedback whatsoever, I'm working on a task one moment and the next my system has gone into expose mode, or begun playing a song, or muted what I was playing, or gone to sleep, or cancelled what I was doing, or dimmed the screen, or switched to a different tab, or something else entirely.
The enormous touch pad is similarly garbage. There's only a few millimetres of separation between the touch pad and the keyboard, and while the palm rejection is top notch it is also far from perfect. It's not possible to use the keyboard without your hands lurking near or on the touch pad. And so, it happens a dozen times per day that a brush of the touch pad by my palm while typing sends the input cursor off somewhere else in my open file, producing confusion and wasting time.
Much love for my 2005 IBM R series Thinkpad, that keyboard remains remarkable even after all this time.
Also much love for my Unicomp Model M replica. I grew up on the Model M and I'll own a keyboard like it until I die, despite the fact that I can't hear my own thoughts over the keyboard clatter.
There you go, it was made for you:
https://www.theverge.com/2015/...
it's old, it's tiny, but I really liked it.
I care about false clicks. The last Lenovo I bought I had to return because the trackpoint didn't work and the keyboard had bad false clicks...
The trackpoint software is designed not to work in the latest drivers...
You can't autoscroll. It only does some weird scrolling that requires pushing..
I want the keys to be close together and when they buckle, they must register a click. I also like really short throw.
All these people saying that the IBM keyboards are the best... that's not true...
I want the key to barely move, with a tiny bit of force.. very consistant force.
I should be able to type with very little finger movement. I don't keep my keys on the home row.. I keep my fingers over the gaps between the keys.. that way I can move my finger just a tiny bit and click up to 4 keys with the slightest motion.
I know my keyboards. I don't need the home keys. Just the gaps between them... so this guy is right.. chicklet keyboards suck really bad. They register false clicks and are very inaccurate in general.
I have yet to use a laptop that had a decent keyboard.
I'll use them if I have to, but I'm always looking to plug in an external keyboard if possible. Fortunately external keyboards are cheap and plentiful so getting access to one usually isn't a problem.
This is a 17" "mobile workstation" type laptop, with an excellent keyboard as those go, although it certainly doesn't compare to the old Sun keyboards. It has some quirks, in particular that the function and control keys are swapped and the default is for the function keys to perform the special functions rather than send the keystrokes, but that can be fixed in the BIOS.
The most annoying quirk is that the touchpad is somewhat to the left of center, although centered relative to the main keyboard, and I found my left palm inadvertently moving the mouse around. But KDE offers a setting to disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in, which solves that problem.
The action is heavier than my old Dell M6500, which is also a 17" mobile workstation. I personally like that. It's also designed to be water-resistant, and they designed rain gutters -- channels through which fluids spilled on the keyboard can drain out the bottom of the laptop.
So what is your point and what does your claims have to do with laptops and keyboards?Oh you can try and figure out who is posting this but I could be any number of people that has posted in the past : Twitter, Spun, Bob_Robertson, Macthorpe, WillyHill, Blakey Rat, CowboyNeil, or CmdrTaco, just to name a few. The more you post such shit against another the more I will reply to counter your shit and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it either.
" what does your claims have to do"
Chris, for crying out loud, pick a case and stick with it.
1) what does your claim have to do...
2) what do your claims have to do...
Typed in my first text editor from a printout - an issue of Dr. Dobbs, I think, don't recall exactly - for the venerable C64, which had no numeric keypad, making data entry of the 6 or 7 K worth of hex assembler code fairly tedious. Otherwise, loved that keyboard.
On the PC side, still miss my Northgate OmniKey Ultra - they offered a bag of keytops for Dvorak which I used before learning to touch on that layout. (Thank you, Mavis Beacon!) DIP switches on the bottom of the keyboard let you switch layouts.
Also on PC, miss using (but still have) a DAS Keyboard - flat black, clicky keys like an IBM, no stencils on the buttons. (Between that and having the Dvorak layout enabled via software, it was difficult for anyone but me to sit down and use the machine. Security through obscurity, anyone?)
But it's OK, I really don't mind not using those anymore, because the keyboard on my '09 MBP is still chunking along quite nicely. Took a little time getting used to it, but now anytime I sit at another machine (even the little bluetooth thing attached to my Samsung tablet) it feels weird.