The Greatest Computer Keyboard of All Time?, article.
...if you're a real typist with plenty of desktop space, I can't recommend it highly enough. It isn't just that I type more accurately, more smoothly, and (therefore) faster; it's that I feel better. I'm more comfortable, less frustrated, less tense; and I approach a day of typing at the computer with eagerness instead of a vague, nagging dread.
Unicomp "IBM Model M" type keyboard, very clicky. (Their site is confusing, but I think this model is a good bet.) It's a "buckling spring" type, which means it does not just use a rubber membrane for resistance, but a quite specific type of spring under the keys which "gives in" right as it registers. Read the linked article for details.
[Note: their more quiet varieties do not have the Buckling Springs advantage, they are just normal rubber dome keyboards.]
Update much later: It is big and not all that pretty, but it really gives me certainty when typing, I can feel for the keys without typing accidentally, and there is no chance of accidental double-hitting a key. Result is that I can type about as fast as I can think (I think about sixty words a minute, not all that impressive if I were a pro secretary, but not bad, it's still maybe six characters a second). It is very loud though. Which might be annoying to co-workers or co-habitants, but I'm a lone wolf, and the loud, fast clicking sort of makes me feel productive, I guess! :-)
[Cool surprise: the extension to this story tells me I'm in good company here.]
I can't believe how cheap this is, less than half of the one I use (TactilePro). And since it may be even better, and may be going out of production, I've ordered two.
(I also can't believe a world where $69 is too expensive for a really good keyboard. That's awful, seriously. People will spend that amount on killing their brain cells on a single saturday night without thinking twice (or even once), but spend it on a keyboard?)
The guy who makes these in the US says he could buy Asia-made keyboards wholesale for three dollars a piece! Isn't it a bizarre world? I mean, that includes shipping and profits for shippers and dealers and everything!
21 comments:
Wow, thanks for this! I am a subscriber to TidBits but hadn't seen this yet.
My partner is a transcriptionist, and a professional typist so the FEEL of the keyboard is essential to her work.
And *I* am a non-typist, who has to look at the keyboard to hit the right notes - err, letters - and the Apple Extended was my favorite. I got a couple of the last version of Apple keyboard, the one with hardly any travel but smooth and easy to clean, but my index fingers get flat spots and pain at their tips with this un-springy keyboard.
So this old fashioned one looks like the best possibiity for both of us!
Guess we should order a couple at least, or maybe two for each of us...
I really hope it survives.
I really like my TactilePro keyboard, but I'm very excited to try this one. The feel and mechanics of a keyboard is hugely influential on the pleasure and speed of typing.
I remember those keyboards very well, they were omnipresent at one time. The touch is truly as good as they claim but... the racket it makes! Granted, I used those kbs in rooms full of them, which makes matters worse. But at the same time, a high ambient noise level often makes appear acceptable what would otherwise be intolerable in a quiet home environment.
Please keep up posted, I'd really like to know how this turns out!
The TactilePro is very clicky too, and that never bothered me. I am noise sensitive generally, maybe it's because I am creating the noise myself that it does not seem to be an issue.
Of course the IBM thingy might be worse. I don't remember having been exposed to one. I'll try and remember to report.
From the description, this seems very similar to a keyboard that came
with my first used computer - a Dell
Optiplex, with a Dell keyboard.
I still have the keyboard tucked away in the corner, and the only reason I'm not using it is because of the noise it makes. But it still works fine, and it even looks a lot like the one pictured.
I spend a lot of my money on my brain, thinking not only once, but always.
Explanation:
Sometimes, when I leave a bookshop with an awfully heavy load under my arms, I ask myself: OMG - so much money for those books......
But then, a saturday night kills the brain cells, and causes financial and health hiccups.
Lol.
I think our money's well-spent Eo. And watching the girls is freeeeeeee, ****
(Getting involved can get very very expensive though). :-O
It starts when you sink in her arms, and it ends with your arms in her sink!
Eolake,
What do you have against brain cell re-ordering?
I'm afraid I tend to treat keyboards as consumables these days.
I'd love a keyboard with indestructible keys. In the past couple of years I've worn the characters off a laptop keyboard (note for Toshiba - white paint isn't adequate!), and beaten a desktop keyboard almost to death.
About 50% of the keys are showing wear from slight to bad, and the "e" key now has a hole worn through it, with a, s &d not far behind. OK, I'm a blogger, and often write several thousand words a day - but even so...
$69, in this instance, would be too much, no matter how good the mechanism, if this time next year I wind up with perforated and blank keys. Of course, if replacement keys were available, it'd be a different story...
I have several of those keyboards. Yes they are great. But whatever you do don't spill a drop or two of any liquid on them since that will kill them right there. They are very sensitive to spills and the usual contact cleaner blast does not revive them.
Ron,
Dang, I wonder how hard you pound those keys. I type a bit, but I've never worn a keyboard so much I've noticed it.
Ron,
If you want one, I'll give you one of those keyboards.
eolake
at
gmail
Morning Eolake,
I really appreciate your offer, thank you, but I have to decline, I'm afraid. The problem is, thanks to my ME/CFS, my hearing can be hypersensitive, so I generally look for a quite kb, usually the membrane type, with short-travel, un-clicky keys. Mini, laptop-style too, which I find less painful to use.
I can't tell you how surprised I am to find that you're based in Lancashire - I came back to your blog because your Whois data in your comment on my blog indicated you were serviced by Virgin out of Manchester and it made me suspicious as, for some reason, I'd always had the feeling you were based in Scandinavia. I was born in Manchester and live in Wirral.
Right, about wearing out a keyboard. If you watch a trained typist on an electric typewriter, or even a kb, she (it's usually a woman) types with the pads of her fingers, with her hands more or less parallel to the kb, like a pianist. I type with the tips of my fingers, and it's my nails - even though they're kept short - which cause the excessive wear.
I learned to type (sort of), in my teens, on an old manual typewriter, which needed the fingertip style to cope with the long travel of the keys, and I've been stuck with it ever since.
OK, gotta go. Thursday is pub day, and I want to try and get a blog post in before I go.
All righty.
I am Danish, but I've lived in Lancashire since 2002.
I would get one of these but I've gotten used to a split keyboard. The regular ones feel cramped and bother my hands after a while.
I tried a Selectric once and I loved the feel of the keyboard and the sound of the keys. (I hate most keyboards that have this weird mushy sound. That's the only way to describe it.) I just don't like typewriters. Like everyone else I've been spoiled by computers. If you make a mistake it's so easily corrected, unlike with a typewriter.
It's too bad they might stop making these. Like anything else of quality, people don't want to pay for it.
Btw, that would be an odd typing technique even with a manual typewriter. I used to own an old 1930s Remington Rand manual typewriter. It was a massive, extremely heavy "portable" typewriter. I typed using pretty much the same method as on a computer keyboard, but it took some time for my hands to get used to the strength required to work the keys. Sort of like going from a car with power steering and an automatic transmission to a Model T.
I didn't have any trouble switching between it and a computer keyboard.
However, I did have a lot of trouble when I tried switching to the Dvorak keyboard layout. It is supposed to be faster than Qwerty but I didn't find it to be. I also couldn't alternate between the two as some people supposedly can. It was either use one or the other. Eventually I had to switch back to Qwerty. (Using Dvorak exclusively made it hard if I ever had to use someone else's computer or a public computer, like at a library.) I can type 85 wpm with Qwerty so I guess that is pretty good. Using a typing program has not increased my speed at all. I wonder if one of these fancy keyboards would make a difference. Hard to say. With Dvorak, I was lucky to make 60.
"that would be an odd typing technique even with a manual typewriter."
What would?
the greatest computer keyboard of all time is still, hands down, no competition, the IBM Model M. I've been using mine for 20 years, and it still works. Not only does it have the perfect tactile feedback, it also sounds like a machine gun and it's sturdy enough to kill someone with.
The only modern keyboard which comes close is Das Keyboard. Everything else is just crap. Especially those ridiculous things that Dell ships with their computers. Ugh.
Eolake:
What would?
Sorry, Big E, I meant to quote Ron. I think I might have had a stroke, with the mistakes I've been making lately - typos, leaving out words, forgetting to quote so that people will know what I'm talking about. That sort of thing.
Ron said:
I type with the tips of my fingers, and it's my nails - even though they're kept short - which cause the excessive wear.
I learned to type (sort of), in my teens, on an old manual typewriter, which needed the fingertip style to cope with the long travel of the keys, and I've been stuck with it ever since.
Just found some neat keyboards, including a NEMA 12 rated keyboard which can take 50g shocks and .04g/Hz vibration between 20 and 2000Hz. All for only $495.
Or how about a nice backlit one for $295
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