keyboards: it's the little things

[cellio]

When I started using computers, keyboards were practically immortal. I stopped using my first keyboard when a couple keys physically broke such that I couldn't get the caps to stay on. My last couple keyboards have not fared so well.

I have an inxpensive Logitech keyboard. "Inexpensive" wasn't actually one of the governing criteria when shopping; I'm willing to pay for a keyboard that delivers higher quality. But what's locally available in stores tends to not be high-end, and I'm not going to spend real money on a keyboard I can't touch first.

The failure mode is irritating, though. My keyboard works fine in most respects, but... well, let me show you a picture:



I can actually live with the worn-off letters because I mostly touch-type. (I'm mystified by what's special about 'L' and 'O'. No, not gaming hotkeys.) But, as a touch-typist, I rely on those little ridges on the 'F' and 'J' keys to tell me that I'm oriented correctly. In the days of typewriters that didn't matter much as you almost never took your hands off the keys, but with a mouse on one side and sometimes a drink on the other, plus things like arrow keys and paging keys, it's pretty essential to the way I use a computer.

My 'J' ridge is gone. And 'F' isn't doing so well either. WTF? That's supposed to be molded plastic!

(I'm open to suggestions, though keyboards are a matter of personal taste so I don't expect them. I require keys that actually have some depth to them; I hate the Mac flat keyboards, which is why I'm using a generic keyboard with my Mac. I also require "not clicky"; typing on anything makes some noise, but I want a quiet one as much as is feasible and definitely not one of the old-style extra-loud ones. I don't care about special keys or even, most of the time, function keys; you'll notice the pristine state of those keys in the photo, cat hair aside. I would prefer that Escape be full-sized. I need the little legs that raise the back of the keyboard.)

Comments

[metahacker]

can you buy replacement keycaps that fit? Keycaps are a big industry these days.

[cellio]

So far what I've found is $4.95 each, plus $1.95 shipping (not sure if that's each or total). On the one hand, money isn't the primary factor; on the other hand, that just feels wrong for a $20 keyboard. I'll keep looking.

(In my ideal universe I'll find a higher-quality keyboard that won't have this failure mode, and it's allowed to cost a lot more than $20 if it's durable.)

[gingicat]

I have similar issues with keyboards. And it seems to be very difficult these days to pry keys up to get to debris underneath.

[asher553]

This problem annoys me too. You're right, key bumps are essential for computer keyboards.

My pet peeve on PC laptops is the double mouse button, which usually lacks any way to distinguish the left button from the right by touch, and now they're often joined together in a single piece.

I have not been a fan of the newer, thinner Mac keyboards, and I find it takes more effort to keep my fingers poised over the keys than to rest them on the keys.

[metahacker]

Yeah, that's the problem with cheap stuff--it's cheap enough that it feels worth it just to replace the whole thing.

If you want to spend more like $80-100, you can get a very decent mechanical keyboard (with no "click", but a better feel), with thicker keycaps...though I don't know if the pips are themselves taller. I've used mechanicalkeyboards.com before, though the variety can be dizzying.

For feedback on what keyboard to buy, www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/ is, y'know, Reddit, so you'll get the usual mix of extremely useful and...not.

[cellio]

Thanks for the info. I'm willing to spend money for decent tools (says the person who brought her own office chair at my last company because the standard issue was terrible). In what ways is the feel of a mechanical keyboard different?

[cellio]

Even if you never use a scroll wheel, it provides a tactile clue. That can be helpful.

I often find mice too tall. So while the Apple keyboard is the epitome of what I don't want, the Apple "magic mouse", which is very short, works well for me. It's a little weird in not having buttons per se; you just press anywhere along the surface, so you can aim for edges to be super-unambiguous if you want. (Yes, the entire length of the mouse, not just the top region.) The surface is a touch/swipe interface for scrolling in both directions. I didn't expect to like it when I first tried it (trackpad? where are my buttons???), but it's pretty nice, and a lot easier on my hand.

[cellio]

Seconded on the prying. The site I found to order replacement keys needs to know what kind of hinge the key has, which you get by prying one up and looking, and my reaction was "what key am I willing to sacrifice in case I break something?". So I haven't tried to look.

[metahacker]

Most cheap keyboards use a scissors/X-based design, where thin keycaps are clipped to two interlocking frames that form an X under the key; this holds the key square as it goes up and down. The restorative force is provided by a plastic cap shaped like a mushroom, which dimples when you press down, and undimples to push the key back up. This provides some 'thunk' but can feel very mushy and uncertain.

Almost all mech keyboards these days are based on the MX system, which consists of a plastic socket on a sprung post. The post/socket combination keeps the key moving vertically, rather than wobbling side to side. It also allows for a very "deep" travel if that's what you want, though many people prefer a shallower action (i.e. move the key less far downward). (Also note that you can select where along that travel the computer recognizes it as "key down"; some people prefer a key to trigger right at the top of travel, others only when it's almost completely down.)

The key caps also are generally slightly heavier than for cheap keyboards; I think this is mostly just for subjective oomph, like car doors that make a satisfying "clunk" when you close them.

The sprung part means that they can carefully adjust the feel along the path of travel. See the gifs here:
http://www.keyboardco.com/blog/index.php/2012/12/an-introduction-to-cherry-mx-mechanical-switches/
for a really deep explanation. Basically you can choose how much resistance, whether the key 'jumps' a little at the end of its travel (so you know tactile-wise whether you've pushed it), and whether it makes an audible 'click', all separately. Based on what you've said I suspect you want Red, unless you want more key-feel, in which case go Brown. (I'm typing on Brown right now. It's not silent, but it doesn't go 'click'.)

One really nice thing about the MX system is that with a tiny bit of soldering, you can replace just certain keys--e.g. some people prefer their shift key to have a different weight, or want their Esc to click, or whatever. Plus, keycap interchangeability means lots of colors.

There are other 'mechanical' keyboard mechanisms (they're all mechanical, but...geeks...); the old holy grail was clicky IBM keyboards, which used a spring that spilled to the side when you pushed the key down--so it resisted for a few mm, then collapsed to the side to make an audible and tactile click. You can still get "buckling spring" keyboards; they're insanely durable, so often these are just old 80s IBM keyboards, cleaned up a little.

[cellio]

Thanks for this! (Yeah, one of the things that was confusing me was "mechanical" -- I mean, aside from the on-screen keyboards on phones/tablets, aren't they all mechanical? So I didn't know what the meaningful difference was.)

It sounds like I probably want brown, but maybe red. No (physical) keyboard is absolutely silent; I'm hearing my typing right now. But I don't want it to be louder than it needs to be; the sound isn't telling me that a key press has registered. So, probably, there's a tactile component, though I grant that most of the time I'm looking at the screen. (I do type "blind" sometimes, but not often.) OTOH, the red doesn't require as much force, and I don't want my keyboard to slow me down.

I'd like to spend, say, 10 minutes typing on one of these before committing ~$100. How might I achieve that? Are there brick & mortar stores that carry these, or is it pretty much "make sure the mail-order place has a return policy"? (I'll start looking at local stores, but if you have broad advice, like "$chain tends to have them", I'm all ears.)

[hlinspjalda]

Maybe a bead of epoxy? I have the same problem as you: don't mind losing the labels for keys, but can't live without the homing bumps. But if you clean the keycap well and then put a little dot of epoxy on it to serve as a temporary homing bump, it should be better than nothing while you research more permanent solutions.

Or maybe, like coathanger wire, it'll hold your vehicle together for the next three years. :-)

[damont]

I'm not a touch-typist (watching me type would probably give you fits), but aside from that you and I sound very compatible for what we're looking for in keyboards. Alas, my favorite keyboard ever hasn't been made for 30 years, perhaps more... and it would take a bit of work to make an ADDS Viewpoint keyboard compatible with modern personal computing hardware.

The crazy part of this is, I actually own an ADDS Viewpoint terminal. Bought it at auction when my alma mater decommissioned them. It still has the W&M inventory tag on it -- a tag I wrote the program to generate, printed myself, and applied to the terminal myself. The year we did that inventoey only two labs still had the Viewpoints, and I got assigned to tag everything in both those labs.

If I had the need for a new keyboard and the blunt to spend on a good one to last, I'd definitely look into mechanical keyboards.

[jducoeur]

Yeah, I can only imagine how impossible I would find typing without the little ridges. It says something about how long I've been touch-typing that I rarely notice the problem with *my* keyboard -- which is that the A, S and L keys have long since worn to pure black, and the D, E, O and M are at least half worn-off. Drives Kate *insane* when she has to use my keyboard. (She also touch-types, but doesn't normally use a split keyboard like mine.)

I suspect that I would find typing on a no-labels keyboard intimidating, but that once I stopped *thinking* about it, I would do just fine. (Well, for the letters -- I'm less reliable with the less-common punctuation symbols, especially -_=+.)

[cellio]

Thanks for the suggestion -- I'll give that a try! It's got to do a better job of sticking to the smooth plastic keys than my experiments with tiny rolls of duct tape.

[cellio]

I almost never look at the keyboard when typing. Occasionally I do for rarely-used punctuation, but if I have a pretty good idea of where it is, it's faster for me to guess, delete if wrong, and try again than it is for me to break focus by looking. I learned to touch-type (on a typewriter, not a computer keyboard) when I was ten, so I've had plenty of practice. And computers give way better visual feedback than typewriters, so even when I make typos, fixing them it just part of the flow.

Related Rands post I just saw: http://randsinrepose.com/archives/how-to-build-a-button/