Purchasing a new keyboard
When I built my desktop computer I bought a cheap keyboard with it and it worked pretty well. However, it broke a few months ago and I resorted to an ancient Tiny-branded keyboard dragged out of my Dad’s loft, complete with a “Close Program” hotkey and volume controls that send weird key names to X11. It’s fine, and it has @ and ” in the right places, but it isn’t comfortable to type on at all. I am of course spoilt these days because I own a ThinkPad and thus am treated to the best laptop keyboard experience there is, which easily outstrips a mediocre desktop keyboard. But I much prefer typing on a full size keyboard in general – or I certainly used to, noticing the improvement when I switched away from my laptop at the end of term. Now it almost feels the other way round.
I will be earning some money for ringing for weddings this summer and I think it might be high time to invest some of it in a really good keyboard to last me for at least a decade. I control my computer almost exclusively through the keyboard and I spend all day typing on it so it feels like a worthwhile use of my money. So I need to decide what (if anything) I am to buy. The contenders so far are limited and I am open to suggestions.
The modern incarnation of the legendary IBM Model M, made a little smaller, available for $69. The ultimate keyboard, really, with only a few disadvantages. The price is high, but it’ll last forever. The main disadvantage is the size and fact that it is harder to clean than the contender below, which is useful when I will be transporting this back and forth between Oxford and Sheffield.
The Apple keyboard. I’d say it is equally as nice to type on as the Model M but I don’t have as much experience with doing so (saying that I haven’t used a Model M in years). The extra USB ports are a big plus when I am stuck with very few USB ports in general, and the keyboard is very easy to clean because there are no gaps to fill up with grime. It is much lighter and easier to transport than even the above “space saver” model. At £39, it’s a little cheaper than the Model M, but not much, and I suspect it won’t last nearly as long (a while vs. forever).
The above factors lean me towards the Apple atm. There are however several worries. I will need to rebind a lot of keys to make the Apple keyboard sane: I will not have Apple push its pseudo-American layout on me when I’ve bought a British-layout keyboard so I’ll have to have a lot of things going to make the keys display the characters they should do. And this means that they won’t display these characters when I boot to Windows, which could be a problem. But not a big one, as these are characters that don’t come up very often.
Any thoughts for a typing junkie?
http://www.simplyian.com/2010/02/10/top-10-most-unique-keyboards/
Take your pick.