Down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole

There&#x27;s a few big upsides to going down this rabbit hole imo-<p>1. Realizing how much dead space there is on a normal keyboard (capslock, the space bar doesn&#x27;t need to be so big, many keys you might want to use frequently are in awkward spots, like the numbers).<p>2. Being able to fully customize the layout to your liking. I don&#x27;t think anyone agrees 100% on what the ideal layout is, but once you get more comfortable with layers and testing various layouts it gets pretty easy to adjust.<p>3. Finding out how quickly you can adapt to multiple layouts by just sticking with it. You won&#x27;t be perfect the first time, and you might struggle to briefly when you switch back to a normal board, but people vastly underestimate how good humans are at adaptation.<p>There&#x27;s also a bonus level of just having nice keys&#x2F;switches. While this is the part that can get pricey, as someone who&#x27;s typing all the time it really does feel like a worthy expense.<p>The major downsides being that it can get expensive fast (at least if you&#x27;re picky), you might need some level of soldering skill, and there are times where you DON&#x27;T want to be the person with the fancy keyboard that no one else can use (I always have a normal one plugged in at work just in case).<p>Still i&#x27;m super glad I got into it. I&#x27;m a huge fan of 40% boards just because of the portability and the space they save. I&#x27;m typing all this, on a mercutio and my work daily driver is a low profile crkbd (I do analytics and some low end&#x2F;intermediate coding).<p>The only issue i&#x27;ve ever run into is that I&#x27;m a fan of roguelikes, and while most games don&#x27;t need too many keys, those in particular seem to have this habit of the designer trying to use EVERY key on a full sized keyboard, so i&#x27;m working on a layer for that.

Somehow mechanical keyboard discussions often seem to forget what I consider to be the granddaddies of them all, the ibm, now unicomp model m keyboards.*<p>I guess it&#x27;s because unicomp does almost no marketing or at least doesn&#x27;t bother to get their stuff in retail stores where there tend to be racks of so-called gaming keyboards and other mechanical keyboards?<p>I can always know whether I pressed the key or not using a buckling spring keyboard, the same cannot be said for linear keys in my admittedly limited experience with razer yellow switches.<p>*Yes there is no doubt someone somewhere who has a space cadet kb or actual physical teletype still hooked up to a modern PC somewhere, but I&#x27;m talking about something that is actually available for sale on a mass scale by consumers. The model f revival exists for collectors and is functional, but is just bespoke enough to me that it&#x27;s more of a collector&#x27;s item than a mass product.

My experience with customizing my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard has taught me something: I can&#x27;t actually diverge too much from a &quot;normal&quot; keyboard layout, because in addition to a USB keyboard at a desk, I also use the built-in keyboards on my personal laptop (Framework) and my work laptop (MBP). It&#x27;s just not worth it for me to build muscle memory that works for only one of the three keyboards I use on a regular basis. So I can&#x27;t, for example, get used to the tab&#x2F;window switching shortcuts of the UHK&#x27;s default Mod layer[1], because as soon as I switch to another keyboard I have to go back to Alt+Tab etc. In theory I could probably figure out some way to implement something like a Mod layer for every keyboard I use regularly, but I don&#x27;t feel like that&#x27;s worth the effort. On the other hand, mapping Caps Lock to Escape is something I can do easily on every keyboard I own, and has been a worthwhile adjustment. It&#x27;s needed on the UHK because by default Escape is on the Mod layer, and I want it as a regular key, but once I did it there I liked it enough to do it everywhere.<p>All that said, I do like the UHK a lot. I bought it mainly for the ergonomics of a split, adjustable angle keyboard, and it&#x27;s great for that. And the silent brown key switches I chose are great for typing during calls.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ultimatehackingkeyboard.com&#x2F;manuals&#x2F;uhk60&#x2F;navigation-shortcuts" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ultimatehackingkeyboard.com&#x2F;manuals&#x2F;uhk60&#x2F;navigation...</a>

This is a rabbit hole that I spent considerate amount of time and money and I’d like to warn some of those who are interested into going in.<p>&gt; Professional musicians don’t play on crappy equipment, right? ;-)<p>With this article sentence I wholeheartedly stand. It’s important to know and optimize tools you’re using most of waking time. Keyboard promises improvement both health and performance wise. Same with layout. Yet both unorthodox keyboards and layouts are considerate investments. Even more so if they are customizable. And it might be possible that they’ll never pay off.<p>I had situations that match common theme: I’m heavily focused on a problem. I’m coding away and that at some point I stumble and fall. I can’t remember combination for some shortcut I’ve been using in ages. Instead of working furiously on the problem I’m solving “where is the key” problem now. The other situation is the stressful one. I found out that under situations that stress me I forgot complex customizations. Keyboard layouts? They don’t work.<p>This get amplified if you have multiple keyboards to work with. I’ve used Dvorak for more then a year - didn’t stick. Split keyboards with standard layout - same. Non orthodox keyboards - even after more than year of using it didn’t work. For keyboard.io I went so far that I got multiple ones to try to avoid “switch fatigue” and ended giving them out.<p>Right now I’m using standard full size low key keyboard with numpad and additional F-keys for bindings. It works, has low latency (latency IS an issue with many keyboards), my hands don’t get tired because there is almost non pressure required (and I type a lot while getting older every day) and that’s the best keyboard I have. Right now I’m considering actually getting rid of tenkeyless keyboard for my gaming pc because lack of keys and all those combos to get to F-s just annoys me when I want to script something. It simply puts a problem in front of me that I didn’t intend to solve.<p>Craftsman has to care for their tools. I agree. But choosing battles is important too.

The problem I see with &quot;improved layout&quot;&#x2F;&quot;ergonomic&quot;&#x2F;&quot;split&quot; keyboards is that not only do you have to retrain your muscle memory to use one, but once you do that, it will be harder for you to use a &quot;regular&quot; keyboard. I have a boring old Dell keyboard at home, so at work (where we have a hot desk policy since Covid -&gt; home office -&gt; office space reduction), I can use any keyboard except for one specific desk where for some reason they have a keyboard with a modified layout where the arrow keys are offset and the block above the arrow keys is rotated 90°

&gt; Professional musicians don’t play on crappy equipment, right?<p>Writing-heavy professions, and even managerial professions where people are writing emails all day probably do more typing than many programmers. I think programmers are into weird keyboards simply because they are nerdy.

I did have a phase where I was using US layout over German, because I do agree that US layout is just more suitable for programming.<p>But training my muscle memory that way turned out to be more of a pain than a gain.<p>As a freelancer, I&#x27;m frequently in a situation where I&#x27;m forced to use a laptop that a client has provided, with a German layout. Oftentimes I will not have an external keyboard on hand, like I&#x27;m in a meeting room and didn&#x27;t want to bring one, or I&#x27;m on a plane or train.<p>In order to make that work, you&#x27;d need to be a pretty disciplined typist who doesn&#x27;t rely on the labels on the keys at all so as not to be confused by them when they&#x27;re in a different layout.<p>Back in those days, there were also many edge cases, like the login screen etc., where you couldn&#x27;t customize your layout away from some default that the client has configured.<p>Also: Most of the pain comes from curly braces. So when you&#x27;re doing Python &amp; Nim you&#x27;re mostly okay using a European layout. I also think it&#x27;s probably not a coincidence that the people behind those languages are Europeans, Guido van Rossum and Andreas Rumpf.

I&#x27;ll never understand the obsession with &#x27;less keys&#x27; amongst the mechanical keyboard &#x27;scene&#x27;.<p>I usually use a Filco Tenkeyless (Cherry Browns), and removing the usually-redundant numeric keypad brings the mouse a bit closer to my right hand, so a bit more comfortable and a little bit of space saved. But I can&#x27;t see the benefit of going smaller ever outweighting the cost of re-learning to type. Adapting to laptop keyboards when used to full-size can be tricky enough...

I went down this rabbit hole and I now:<p>- use 30 keys<p>- control the mouse from my keyboard<p>- never have to move my palms in the slightest all day<p>- get far more control and (Emacs) keybindings<p>It was a very painful process though deciding on my custom key layout. I would make myself re-learn new layouts on an daily or hourly basis for 6 months until I was satisfied.<p>I have a Moonlander but my long term plan is to move to Tightyl: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;MechanicalKeyboards&#x2F;comments&#x2F;glfyki&#x2F;the_tightyl_a_tight_tiny_dactyl_manuform&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;MechanicalKeyboards&#x2F;comments&#x2F;glfyki...</a>

Also went down this rabbit hole. Did a review of the split keyboard UHK v2 which I highly recommend.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OPmoB8-11JY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;OPmoB8-11JY</a><p>Edit: Apologies for the video quality.<p>PS: The UHK might be of interest to some who aren&#x27;t sure if a split is their thing. It isn&#x27;t ortholinear, so the keys are staggered in the usual way. It also allows the keyboard to be re-connected in a single slab if you choose not to use the split. I&#x27;d def recommend the split to help with preventing carpal tunnel or RSI.

Really cool (and expensive) rabbit hole.<p>My first mechanical keyboard was a Razer Blackwidow with Cherry MX Blue switches. Next, I bought a blank-key Das with Cherry MX Brown. Since then I&#x27;ve used an Input Club K-Type, a Tesoro Durandal, and some Logitech keyboard with MX Reds. I actually really liked the MX Reds, way more than I thought I would. So when I ordered the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard it was with Box Reds. I also still have an Input Club Nightfox waiting to be assembled in my closet - it&#x27;s been there for years. I should probably just sell it at this point.<p>In regards to layouts, I too prefer US layout for coding. But I live in a European country with special characters and have gotten used to using that layout. The UHK, however, will come with a US layout and I&#x27;ll map the special characters to alternative keys. I hadn&#x27;t delved much into special key mappings on my boards yet, so that&#x27;ll be interesting. I got it with the trackball module in hopes of never needing to use a mouse again.

I just started going down this rabbit hole myself after seeing a video of the Dactyl Manuform split keyboard. I&#x27;m thinking about getting one now. Is there someone on HN who works fulltime on a split keyboard? How does that work out for you? I suspect the Dactyl is very comfy but i&#x27;m not sure if that still is the case if you use it full time. The Iris looks great too. So if you have experience with that I would love to hear it too.

Having accustomed to using a Thinkpad Trackpoint, I am always struggling with separate keyboard and mouses. I mean, I rarely use the mouse, but cannot completely ditch it.<p>The ergonomics of a split keyboard is very appealing. For the last months, I’ve simply used two thinkpad trackpoint usb keyboards as a cheap but working substitute :-D

When I moved to Europe, companies starting giving me EU (In my case either danish or icelandic) laptops, and I can barely function without plugging in my US keyboard. I&#x27;ve found it so much easier just to learn key sequences to input the few special characters and stick to what I&#x27;m otherwise used to for the last 30 years I&#x27;ve been typing.<p>I know some of it is just that - what you&#x27;re used to - but I have several native colleagues that have switched to US layouts for coding as well.<p>As for small keyboards, that&#x27;s the old man in me I guess. At some point in my youth either with Turbo Pascal or word perfect, I got used to Ctrl-Insert to copy, Shift-delete to cut, Shift-Insert to paste. Not only that Home&#x2F;End&#x2F;Page up&#x2F;Page down are some of my most commonly used keys writing code. Number pads are nice but I would take a serious hit without my nav keys.

I&#x27;ve been a fan of mechanical keyboards for 20 years now. I bought a IBM Model M off ebay when I was in my teens. The space itself isn&#x27;t that fun to participate in, lots of people eagerly waiting to gatekeep their little space. And the really cool stuff is going for $600 before you even add in any switches, boards or keycaps.<p>All that said, I found Keychron (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.keychron.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.keychron.com&#x2F;</a>) keyboards last year and their quality and price absolutely blew me away. I bought two of the Keychron Q2 QMKs, fully assembled.<p>Sounds like an ad but I was just so happy to finally find a keyboard of this quality that didn&#x27;t make me wait 6 months, didn&#x27;t cost $1200, and wasn&#x27;t buried in some community exclusive drop that only 18 people would have access to, etc.

Mechanical keyboards don’t have to be a rabbit hole. Just get something in a normal layout with brown switches (or silenced if you need that) and call it a day. I got a Keychron because they have Mac function keys, it was less than $100 and feels way better than the short key travel Magic Keyboard. I have no desire to upgrade.

I see a lot of people here complain about the misconception that nonstandard layouts on small form factor keyboards require emacs-esque key chording to get rather common keys like ~ or |. This is completely incorrect.<p>I personally use a fullsize cherry keyboard in boring office grey, standard iso layout and the linear switches it came with. It has a navigation block, a numblock and the full function key row. However, due to the layout I&#x27;m using I never touched the numblock or the navigation cluster even once. There are four layers I use: The first layer are the normal lowercase letters and digits. The second layer is activated when I press shift, and inputs the same symbols but uppercase. The third layer inputs symbols. It is activated by pressing capslock or #. From there every common symbol I might ever want for programming language weirdness is readily accessible. The fourth layer I use is activated by pressing either &#x27;&lt;&gt;|&#x27; or right alt (alt gr). It activates the navigation cluster under my left hand and the numblock under my right hand. This way, it is entirely possible to only live in the 60% portion of the keyboard my hands are already on while enjoying all upsides the navigation and numblock areas provide. There is no chording, just like you wouldn&#x27;t call it chording when you press shift to enter a capital &#x27;A&#x27;.

Just sharing my personal experience there.<p>During isolation I bought my first mechanical keyboard (a cheap Qisan Magicforce 68, that I wholeheartly recommend). I quickly learned to use it and still love it at home.<p>A few months ago I bought a kinesis advantage for my office. I&#x27;m fully used to it (although it took me a while to stop hitting wrong keys).<p>When I bought both keyboards, I already knew how to touch type and went back to typeracer, keybr and monkeytype. My speed did not increase that much and I still get my fastest speeds on my macbook pro integrated keyboard.<p>The main reason why I use an external keyboard is to solve my back problems, by using a stand or an external screen.<p>In particular, I get my slowest typing speeds on my kinesis advantage. It is NOT built for speed, it is built for comfort. It allowed me to improve my posture considerably so it&#x27;s still worth it.<p>PS: in my experience, using a laptop stand &#x2F; external monitor helps with the <i>lower</i> back problems (weirdly). I solved my upper back problems by doing more exercise, and it&#x27;s as easy as having some elastic bands near my desk and trying to stretch them horizontally behind my neck a few minutes a day (when I&#x27;m reading a long email or pdf or thinking or need a break).<p>PS2: a must-have on macOS is karabiner. I use it to have nicer keybindings for french accents (modifier keys like `) but also to configure function keys on my kinesis advantage and put navigation shortcuts on my mouse (logitech G502).

It is the normal way to go. First mechanical, then columnar staggered (split) with at least 60% of the &quot;normal&quot; keys. Then towards 40% split boards :-)

&gt; Emacs users often get the credits for inventing this hack. And that hack is about realizing how stupid they caps lock key really is. Well, maybe not stupid, but unless you write SQL all day long, you’re not using it enough for it to deserve such a good position right there on the home row on your keyboard. Replace it with ctrl!<p>Why didn’t I ever think of this? The location of ctrl has always been awkward to me.

Been down this one: spent a large amount of money, annoyed my family with clicky keys, ended up with sore wrists, left it.<p>Now using an Apple magic keyboard. It’s quiet, doesn’t make me hurt, actually has all the keys I need and doesn’t piss anyone off.

I would guess that the single biggest ergonomical win comes from a split keyboard, where the hands are no longer angled outward. Any other feature (staggering, thumb keys, bowled wells etc) would give further, but much smaller, improvements.<p>At least this is me experience after 4-5yrs of Kinesis Advantage.

I am in the light-yet-tactile camp. I hate cherry switches. Mx browns feels like rough linears, Mx blue are probably my least favourite clicky switches.<p>I find Matias keyboards fantastic, yet their tactile switches have awful quality issues, probably due to the lube. I cleaned all mine and applied my own lube which made them work as they should.<p>Their clicky switches are amazing feeling, and have no issues that I know of. And the keyboards lack all those worthless extras like backlighting and gamer fonts. It is almost like they decided they wanted to sell keyboards to grown-ups.<p>So now I have found my keyboards. Whenever Matias goes bankrupt I will probably scrape eBay for BTC dome with slider keyboards (better rubber domes cost 30x as much).<p>If you like linear switches there are LOADS of exciting things going on.

For work I’ve become so very accustom to using a HHKB - in the office I use a HHKB Professional Hybrid Type-S. the Topre switches are essentially perfect for me, and the layout is so comfortable for me<p>But personally at home I’m really enjoying the ability to customise the layout, switches and keycaps. I have two keyboards which I swap between at home, a tokyo60, a hot swap board which emulates the HHKB layout, within which I have quiet linear switches “Prevail Epsilons”. And a Drop CTRL, a “ten keyless” design which is also hotswappable, in which I use “Glorious Pandas”; a tactile type switch like Cherry MX Browns, which I feel are better.<p>At this stage of the game I’m pretty much finished, like with hifi audio, it’s very easy for this to get out of hand quickly.

I am using a Kinesis Adv 2 and have just switched to Colemak DH myself. It&#x27;s really hard to rewire your brain ti type on it, but after a week now I&#x27;m starting to get faster.<p>One thing that I still haven&#x27;t quite figured out is Vim... How do people use Vim with an alternative layout? do you keep the same keybindings and just deal with it(hjkl are not nicely in line for example) or do you remap each action to the physical location it would be on a qwerty keyboard (i.e. navigating with mnei for example)?

Wonder why they didn&#x27;t try the Planck from ZSA. I use it as my daily driver. It did take about a month to get used to, but now I am just as fast at typing as previously - and my fingers are moving much, much less.<p>I still get wrist strain because the angle of my hands which the Moonlander would have fixed... however I heard a big issue with the Moonlander is you need to always look at your hands before you begin to type - because you cant take your hand away to use the mouse and find that keyboard half again

I honestly don&#x27;t understand the mechanical keyboard hype. I&#x27;ve now owned and used several but I prefer a plain old low profile keyboard like the Apple keyboards. I have a theory about this.<p>I notice that some people like to stab the keys. They seem to use an excessive amount of force. I&#x27;ve always been all about using the least effort possible so low-profile keyboards seemed optimal to me. You just need barely a touch to register a keystroke. Mechanical keyboards seem built for excessive travel time in comparison.<p>I have no evidence of this but I really do wonder if excessive typing force contributes to RSI&#x2F;CTS.<p>The author here really did go down a rabbit hole and I suggest that as soon as you look at changing layouts, you&#x27;ve perhaps gone a bit too far. At some point you&#x27;ll be using a keyboard that isn&#x27;t yours. The universality of QWERTY (or whatever the equivalent is in your locale) has virtues all of its own.<p>My only real objection to mechanical keyboards is people who use super-clacky keyboards in an open-plan environment. That&#x27;s just antisocial and inconsiderate.

Oh boy. I’ve nearly taken the plunge myself because I wanted a very compact, efficient keyboard, but most of these aren’t Bluetooth (I’d have bought an Ergodox Planck if it was), and after researching building my own I nearly pulled the trigger on it. Then I bought a €20 Bluetooth keyboard on Xmas: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taoofmac.com&#x2F;space&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;19&#x2F;1830" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taoofmac.com&#x2F;space&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2022&#x2F;02&#x2F;19&#x2F;1830</a><p>The upshot of my experience is that the Apple Magic Keyboard is still amazing - flat, compact, quiet - and that it could be improved by being split or angled ergonomically - and I’d buy a keyboard that did exactly that (or what I bought for €20) with a good, quality build.<p>(Alternate layouts, however, I believe to be a tad too much. I can and do switch between various regional variations of QWERTY on Mac and PC without looking at the keys - since I code in US layouts but need to type accented characters on PC and Mac - but going Workman or Colemak would make it hellish to switch between machines as often as I need to…)

My experience with mechanical keyboards is that after 3 years of using one (Anne Pro 2), I still hit the wrong keys so often, last week I switched again to my good old magic keyboard (the one that uses AAA batteries, is almost 10 years old) and I can relate that my muscle memory is so fixed with this keyboard.<p>But still like the mechanical keyboards, maybe I need to try one with lower profile.

A while ago I bought a mechanical keyboard and I am still sometimes surprised by how much less I need to push down on a key for it to be registered. Still pressing too strongly actually. But it already has helped me to avoid some pain in the finger joints, which in turn also allowed me to do more coding in my free time, off the job, as well. Previously after a day of coding and doing things at work, sometimes my fingers would hurt and I would avoid any unnecessary typing. That however annoyed me, because I have many projects myself, which I want to make progress on.<p>So I am quite happy with my mechanical linear feedback key switches keyboard.<p>If you are a person, who types a lot, I definitely recommend investing in a really good keyboard, since you spend a lot of time each day typing and can avoid some pain.<p>Not so much into alternative keyboard layouts yet. Maybe some day.

I’ve always wanted the mechanical keyboard crowd to stretch further. Where is the keyboard made of pipes and water? Made of plants? The air keyboard that uses LED sensors and light to type? Keyboard gloves? An old typewriter turned into a modern keyboard?<p>A lot of this stuff is done in the raspberry pie or arduino crowds.

Almost fall into the pitfall. Have seen friends around spending 300-400$ in &quot;custom&quot; keyboards.<p>Used a couple of mechanical keyboards over time: Razer, Anne Pro II, Logitech G something, custom made, Asus Rog TKL etc. Well, used those for fun with PC but my major workhorse has always been Mac setup: MacBook + Monitor + Magic Keyboard&#x2F;Trackpad, and productivity has always been there with this setup.<p>Although I spent some time with Mechanical keyboards, still Magic Keyboard TKL scores the highest, in terms of productivity, stability, comfort.<p>You can have fun w&#x2F;mech keyboards, but I&#x27;d rather spend my time onto something that actually matters. Go with simplicity without overthinking and wasting time.

I have to wonder, like a mathematician, does the perfect keyboard + layout have to exist at all?<p>Maybe its just not possible. Lets say in a typical day I spend 2 hours in each of vscode, Word, Excel and bash. Each one of those needs a different keyboard experience that is not very compatible with the others. To take a trivial example, in bash I want the semicolon, ampersand, quote, parens and tab keys to be prominent. imagine them being raised a few mm above the surface of the kbd in that mode. But in Excel i need arrow keys and a numpad plus parens and equals. and in word i just need a to z and basic punctuation. A standard keyboard, even an exotic one, doesnt really help.

I went down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole too, luckily I got out before buying any of the expensive keyboards. Started with a blue switch keyboard. Found the travel time way too long and the high rise keys were hurting my wrists. I found myself typing slower on it than usual and making more mistakes. Then I switched to a low profile blue switch keyboard. This one I actually enjoyed. But in the end, I still got back to a scissor switch keyboard (A4Tech KV-300H). For me personally, the flatter the keyboard, the better. I loved butterfly keyboard on Macbook too, shame they switched to standard scissor switch.

So I am using my Ergodox EZ (have to upgrade to moonlander at some point) for three years now. I also first learned Colemak and then Halmak and am now as happy as I ever could be with my keyboard setup.

I find the height of mechanical keyboards too high (ie they are much thicker than apple keyboards) and it causes strain on my shoulders.<p>I am much more relaxed typing on a thin keyboard like the Apple ones.

I&#x27;ve been on the Kinesis Freestyle Blue for years and I love it. I paired it with a Logitech trackball that&#x27;s apparently discontinued; I&#x27;m looking for a replacement as good. Their setup here is really close.<p>Long term, what I really want in a split mechanical keyboard: trackballs on both sides, near the spacebar, with intuitive mouse triggers built in. Maybe even a trackpad on one side, trackball on the other. That would be slick. One input device.

I never got super into mechanical keyboards, but I&#x27;ve used them for my PC for the last decade or so just cause they&#x27;re fun to type on.<p>But out of curiosity, I tested my typing speed on my mechanical keyboard vs my Apple Magic Keyboard (where I do most of my programming, being that I use a Mac for my job), and I got about an extra 10wpm on the Apple one (~90wpm vs ~100wpm).<p>I think it&#x27;s the low travel that helps my speed.

I had one for some years, but I couldn&#x27;t deal with the maintenance. At one point it began to double type, and then I had to take it apart, clean it a bit, put it together and hope that the issue went away - which it sometimes did, sometimes needed another round of cleaning. So I sold it and now I&#x27;m back to a solid rubber domed office keyboard which &quot;just works&quot;.

I bought my first one a year ago (Keychron K2 v2) and I&#x27;ve mostly enjoyed it. It has both USB and BT output, which is nice.<p>Except, I just recently found a really terrible bug. If I disconnect the USB and switch to BT mode and the battery dies, I&#x27;m unable to use USB mode whatsoever until the battery is fully charged (I think BT works eventually but not straight from 0% charged either).

Can someone, who uses one of those tiny keyboards, elaborate how to work at all (let alone effectivly) without the Home&#x2F;End&#x2F;Page up&#x2F;Page down block or arrow keys? How do you mark a word? How do you jump between lines or beginning and end of the line?<p>(And I don&#x27;t even want to think about having no F-keys - which would require even weirder key-combinations in many cases.)

I&#x27;ll stick with my CM Storm Quick Fire TK browns with toggle between numpad and standard keys. I may be the only one though because they discontinued it. I think it is the best kind of &quot;ten-keyless&quot; as it still has the numpad.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vM1Q-B-h40w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vM1Q-B-h40w</a>

My favorite keyboard of all time is the kinesis freestyle 2. It’s a split keyboard, but unlike other splits, it is big, so i have arrow keys and function keys, just like my other keyboards. It is also not mechanical, which i think is a plus because all the mech switches I’ve tried are loud and require more pressure or key travel.<p>Cheap way to go ergo.

I&#x27;ve tried a few different different mechanical keyboards over the years, and I keep ending up back on my trusty old Corsair K70 w&#x2F; mx brown switches. 6+ years and still going strong.<p>Mechanical keyboards are nice, but try not to fall into the consumerist trap of throwing away hundreds if not thousands of dollars chasing keyboard perfection.

I have tried and decided to ignore mechanical keyboards and custom layouts altogether.<p>Why? * I do not have (yet?) any pain or trauma in hand or wrist * I type 50%-50% on the laptop&#x27;s keyboard or a desktop, and my brains can&#x27;t seem to work properly with 2 different typing experiences...<p>So I decided that I should stay basic, cheap and subopmtimal.

Been there done that. First I got an IBM buckling spring keyboard. I had forgotten how much I hated the sound and force needed for a keypress. Then some with Cherry switches, they where also meh. Then a Topre clone, just to find out that I actually prefer rubber domes. Now I&#x27;m using a cheap low profile Dell.

I&#x27;ve never been a touch-typist, so my relationship with keyboards has been different from many.<p>I need to look at the keys, so backlights and illuminated characters are important to me.<p>I like a &quot;clicky&quot; keyboard, but am prome to &quot;one-off&quot; misrajes. These are magnified by keyboards with smaller surface.

Going on a tangent, I imagine that on spaceships or in space colonies there will be no place for mechanical keyboards. &quot;Moving parts&quot; will eventually break, and resource-strapped communities cannot afford that. For better or worse, touchscreen will be all they will have.

Someone should write article about &quot;down the vim&#x2F;emacs configuration rabbit hole&quot; also :)

The small mechanical keyboards are missing the small backtick which is also ё in Russian.

One thing I&#x27;d vouch for was the improvement in my RSI&#x2F;hand aches I got from switching to a £100 mechanical keyboard with mx speed silver switches (low activation force). Absolute godsend as far as I&#x27;m concerned.

My experience with MX switches was that they were terribly underwhelming, they felt cheap and in the case of MX browns they somehow made my keyboard accuracy decrease.<p>Topre switches, on the other hand, have been worth every penny.

I was almost down the rabbit hole. I stopped at Topre Boards. I enjoy typing and prefer it to any other board. Typing is my daily business amd to me worth the investment. I put corporate issued keyboards aside.

My measure of a keyboard is how fast I can type on it and then how much the sound of it annoys me. Quiet and fast is where its at for me. There are lots of cheap everyday keyboards that work well for me.

This is the part I&#x27;m dreading the most about returning to the office. Teammates with mechanical keyboards just drive me mad. I get it you&#x27;re typing! I can tell from 20 feet away.

I’ve used dozens of keyboards and have finally settled on the HHKB Professional Hybrid Type-S as my endgame, as have many other programmers and engineers at least in the Bay Area.

I wanted to try an alternative to a Magic Keyboard, just because. Went for a Nuphy Air 75 — Worst $200 I ever spent in recent years.

@fowlie Have you taken a look at Maltron[1] yet?<p>1.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.maltron.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.maltron.com</a>

I love my keyboard, but it makes going back to the office even harder. Some crappy $10 keyboard now feels horrible.

With all the fancy keyboards and custom firmwares today, how come none have a built in 2FA&#x2F;FIDO&#x2F;U2F key?

Until you&#x27;ve made your own Dactyl with a Trackball, you&#x27;ve not reached enlightenment, young Padawan.

All I want to know is why is it every cool key cap set I find is sold out?

It lubes the switches or it gets the hose again.

Over the lockdown period I went on a bit of a general keyboard adventure myself. I read and saw a lot about optimum keyboards and wondered if I was missing out on amazing typing experiences. After all, typing was my job right (programming) so it made sense that I spend some time and money finding the best possible tools.<p>I went through various full-sized mechanical keyboards, ergonomic keyboards, split keyboards (like the moonlander from this article, but different) and gave them a few months each. I would regularly check in with typingtest.com to try and get some real stats and see if my speed and accuracy was improving without me noticing. For reference&#x2F;context I was originally trained with proper touch typing skills but have &quot;evolved&quot; into my own style (mainly using index middle ring for most typing with little &amp; thumb reserved for shift, space, alt, ctrl, enter etc) ... average typing speed is about 75wpm with 99+% accuracy.<p>After a load of money and time, it turns out that for me, a simple low profile chiclet keyboard (e.g. like this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Apple_keyboards#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Apple_iMac_Keyboard_A1243.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Apple_keyboards#&#x2F;media&#x2F;File:Ap...</a>) is by far the best option for me:<p>- mechanical keyboards are just too &quot;tall&quot; for me. It was fatiguing having to raise my fingers so much only then to push them down so much. The clickyness was a nice gimmick (initially), but I don&#x27;t think it improved my typing at all, and just pissed off my wife. Yes I know you can get silent switches. Mine weren&#x27;t. Returning to a non-mechnical keyboard definitely felt &quot;bad&quot; afterwards, but the adjustment takes a couple of minutes.<p>- ergonomic keyboards were cool - I really enjoyed them and I kinda had this mental image in my head where I was kinda typing on a beachball. I really liked it, but it seems you cannot get a decent quality ergonomic keyboard with low-profile keys so you ended up with the same finger fatigue you get form a mechanical keyboard.<p>- the split layout keyboard was a <i>mind fuck</i> - somehow just separating out the two halves seemed to reduce my brain down into something akin to a never-used-a-computer-before level of ineptitude. I was genuinely having to look for keys &quot;Where is P?!&quot; it just totally undid decades of keyboard layout knowledge and it was like it was the first time I was ever using a computer! Even when the two halves were approximately about the same position and spacing as the ergo keyboard, it was a real challenge. The whole time using the split keyboard (even with a conventional layout) was torture for me.<p>With a chiclet keyboard, I just find them so much more pleasant to use - your fingers can just float around over the top with minimal fatigue and you can genuinely &quot;flow&quot; over they keys, moving your hands fluidly as you make tiny movements to activate the keys, and the keyboard itself is like 1cm thick so you do not need to raise your hands above the desk that much. I would like to find one with mechanical switches, but it seems that all mechanical switches are huge monsters that themselves are like 15mm high before you add the base of the keyboard.

Is it just me or do mechanical keyboard aficionados sound strangely like audiophiles?<p>I&#x27;ve worked on all sorts of keyboards since 1982, and I honestly can&#x27;t see what all the hububb is about. The effect on your job performance is so minimal that it hardly seems worth worrying about beyond &quot;is it comfortable?&quot; and &quot;does it annoy people around me?&quot;. It would be like classical guitarists arguing over which brand of footstool improves performance the most.