Travel for the Typist

I’ve maintained a strict preference for keyboards with large travel, a satisfying clack, a brutish durability. J’s laptop is good for a laptop, in that most laptops outright suck in this department, but still nowhere near the awesome of the keyboards preferred. I direct you to the old IBM Modem M keyboards, and certain old Compaq boards of the type I usually use. Perhaps more important, however, then all these key-travel properties, are the key-positions.

As someone using a keyboard for typing code or shell commands, the position of the outer symbols and punctuation is critical. Or at least the consistant positioning. There are simply way too many keyboards out there with a big L-shaped Enter key covering the place Pipe usually is.

The classic 101-key Enhanced keyboard layout has everything I want. Half-size enter key, with backslash and pipe above. Full-size backspace. Tilde at the top-left. Gaps between Alt and Ctrl for finger-alignment. Seperated inverted-T arrowkeys. 6 ins/home/pgup/del/end/pgdown keys, also in a seperate block.

When I need to reach for one of the extended keys (cursor position) I invaribly do so by feeling the edges of the keys: I don’t just push the key, first my hand slides over and gropes the keygroup in question. Some shitty keyboards have the 6 position keys shoved down into the arrowpad, and additional “Power Saving” keys plopped in there, rendering the area a complete mess.

Now I just need to find a keyboard like this on a laptop. On the other hand, maybe it’s time to switch paradigms entirely.