At the End of the Day, Which Keyboard do You Actually Use?

[Stabilized]

Leopold FC660C all the time pretty much. I do rotate, but I think my fingers have been on that board the most.

Done a silence mod with landing pads, still unsure how I feel about them, sounds fantastic though.

[Muirium]

Know for sure that the 60% illuminati judges every one of you who admits to needing traditional arrow keys. The 75%ers worst of all. So close!

[courtesi]

Know for sure that the 60% illuminati judges every one of you who admits to needing traditional arrow keys. The 75%ers worst of all. So close!

While Youtube contains a lot of videos on keyboard reviews and typing I don't think I've seen many on 60% usage.

For example taking a bad document (mispellings, adjustments needed) and showing with a particular board how you would quickly edit it with the fewest finger contortions possible.

[Hypersphere]

I am thinking of how I might wire up two HHKBs to emulate an F-122, but I would still be two keys short.

[Muirium]

I edit with 60% all the time. Three finger chording is no problem, to me. I do have two hands, after all! And they're always in the right place on a 60%, instead of nipping off down the street to another region of the keyboard. That's my mouse right there where the arrow keys would be, ready for the most onerous duties. I use it little when editing, but when I need it, the little bugger's good to fly.

Definitely all a matter of personal preference, ergonomics and subjective choice. I don't suffer with my 60%s at all. (Hell, here on DT they are thoroughly mainstream, so where's the rebel cred!) Yet I'm sure other people would feel like their shoelaces were tied together if they lost their navigation island. And one or two aren't truly happy without well more than 100 keys. (We all know who you are. You keep on lecturing us all about the error of our ways!)

[Hypersphere]

Although I feel most at home using my HHKB, sometimes I just want to pull out all the stops and go with a mighty console like an F-122. Most of the keys are redundant for me, but it can be fun to let the hands fly over the range of keys to accomplish the same task in multiple ways.

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ConsoleOrgueWanamaker". Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons -

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... amaker.jpg

[zslane]

Yeah, those of us who prefer 104 or more keys are dinosaurs for sure. The number of mech board enthusiasts who prefer full-size boards (that aren't vintage IBM boards or a clone) seems pretty small to me, and I can only conclude it is because the kind of work done by people these days doesn't benefit much from a numpad or a navcluster.

My buddy (who is a visual fx artist) is just now getting into mech boards and SA keycaps (thanks to me, naturally) and he insists that he absolutely must have the numpad for the way he drives Maya. I extolled the virtues of Topre switches and pitched him the NovaTouch but he waved it off. Who'da thought? Not even me, but it was nice to find another blood brother.

[XMIT]

What an odd question. I pick a different keyboard almost every day depending on how I'm feeling. I tend to prefer TKLs.

Right now I've got a V60 with MX Clears and DSA Dolch attached to my tablet writing this. There is a Novatouch with Vortex PBT doubleshots and Hypersphere's rings on my desk. I was playing with an AEK I just this morning.

If I had to sell every other board I'd probably keep just two: my WASD v2 with lubed MX Clears and Granite knockoffs, and an SSK. #3 would be my F107. Then my 45g Topre, etc etc.

[SL89]

CODE Fullsize with MX Greens and No O-rings + Hack'd By Geeks SA

(Pardon the messy IT mayhem )

Some day I'll get around to putting R5 on it.

[Muirium]

My buddy (who is a visual fx artist) is just now getting into mech boards and SA keycaps (thanks to me, naturally) and he insists that he absolutely must have the numpad for the way he drives Maya. I extolled the virtues of Topre switches and pitched him the NovaTouch but he waved it off. Who'da thought? Not even me, but it was nice to find another blood brother.

3D design apps are one good use of the nav cluster. Autodesk (the one company that's still in business and makes practically all of them) assumes you have a fullsize keyboard, and they damn well exploit all those typically dusty keys around the edges! Only a full-size Topre would suit your pal, or if he wants to sound industrious, then perhaps a plain regular Model M. Depends on how crazy he is yet and what he considers the budget!

I have a friend who uses, well toys with, 3D Studio instead. (Autodesk again…) He has a fullsize Monterey board now, which he found via his IT day job. Crappy caps, horrible flex, but a gorgeous racket no matter what he's doing. I've noticed him writing much longer lately when he gets in touch with me from his desktop. I can understand: his previous board was a busted up rubberdome crime against humanity!

[bhtooefr]

It's worth noting that one of my favorite boards is a 60%... with arrow keys. (If you ignore the reset key and 80/40 column and QWERTY/Dvorak (or outside of the US, US/International) lock switches, anyway.) The Apple //c Memory Expansion keyboard's got a quite nice layout. (Really, ignoring the reset and other keys, the //e and original //c are the same layout, too.)

[zslane]

My buddy (who is a visual fx artist) is just now getting into mech boards and SA keycaps (thanks to me, naturally) and he insists that he absolutely must have the numpad for the way he drives Maya. I extolled the virtues of Topre switches and pitched him the NovaTouch but he waved it off. Who'da thought? Not even me, but it was nice to find another blood brother.

3D design apps are one good use of the nav cluster. Autodesk (the one company that's still in business and makes practically all of them) assumes you have a fullsize keyboard, and they damn well exploit all those typically dusty keys around the edges! Only a full-size Topre would suit your pal, or if he wants to sound industrious, then perhaps a plain regular Model M. Depends on how crazy he is yet and what he considers the budget!

I have a friend who uses, well toys with, 3D Studio instead. (Autodesk again…) He has a fullsize Monterey board now, which he found via his IT day job. Crappy caps, horrible flex, but a gorgeous racket no matter what he's doing. I've noticed him writing much longer lately when he gets in touch with me from his desktop. I can understand: his previous board was a busted up rubberdome crime against humanity!

It wasn't just the navcluster he was looking for, it was the numpad he just had to have. That's what surprised me most.

After auditioning my Filco (MX reds with SA caps), my Pok3r (MX reds with Granite caps), my Realforce HiPro, my Model M, and my Noppoo EC108Pro (with generic PBT DSA caps), he decided he liked the Filco best. I let him play with an MX tester so he could feel MX's notion of "tactile" as well as their clicky switches. The Topre switches felt strange to him, though he could sort of imagine how one might get used to them. Ultimately he decided it was MX reds he wanted--I even tried to steer him towards MX blacks instead so I could entice him into buying my unused Filco, but he was firmly set on reds.

And of all the keycaps he tried, it was the semigloss wonder that is SP's SA family he liked best. I believe he just put in a Round 5a order for a bunch of Honey kits. I'll probably steer him towards a barebones WASD V2 as the keycap vessel.

[Muirium]

Odd. I don't know why I said nav cluster. (Probably a brainspill from the editing on an HHKB defense I was up to earlier.) I do indeed know that Autodesk populates the whole numpad with vital shortcuts. I like the fact they've found a legitimate use for it! Although I'd probably hate them if I tried getting into Maya et al, for myself. We have >1KRO. There's no need for this 1 key: 1 function madness. Especially when there's no mnemonics!

[Madhias]

At work we use software from 'Esko', and lots of applications heavily use the F-row (for example basic things like zooming, moving around, etc.). I can understand why someone just needs a numpad. Replacing all shortcuts drives me nuts when sitting then again on another workstation with standard shortcuts.

[seebart]

While doing important DT wiki work with Engicoder this christmas day I'm on my NTC KB 6151 with Alps SKCM Blue. Full size and built like a tank. The keycaps are not spectacular though.

http://deskthority.net/wiki/NTC_KB-6151

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[Muirium]

this christmas day

I know there's lots of time zones between us for a change, by isn't this still Christmas Eve in Europe too? You cheaters!

[seebart]

Of course I'm exaggerating! I only spent like half an hour on the wiki today adding some Zenith ZKB-2 pics to get away from the christmas buzz for a while.

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Zenith_ZKB-2

[mashby]

I try to rotate between boards throughout the week. This week was a white HHKB Type-S, Duck Viper and a Poker X, but it's the Poker that I return to time-and-time again.



PCB: Poker X
Case: Hammer 60%, titanium finish with shelf liner to add some silencing
Plate: Black plate from iMav group buy back in 2012
Switches: Cherry MX-Black, lubed with Krytox and black stickers
Keycaps: Carbon (SA Profile) right now, but usually Penumbra
Cable: Paracord sleeved, Gift from Badwrench

It's one of the first boards I ever worked on and I never imagined that I'd use it as much as I have.

[SL89]

Mashby that looks sick. Are the Orange colors just a tiny bit more red then the Hack'd By Geeks / usual GH colors or is it just the photo.

[Hypersphere]

@Mashby: Welcome back, both on GH and DT. It is good to see posts from you again.

Which Krytox did you use on your mx black switches?

I recently got the Carbon SA set -- my first in this profile. I like the profile, spherical tops, and the alpha keys, but I am not too keen on the orange. You are lucky to have the Penumbra SA set, which I think is one of the most attractive I have seen. I hope that it becomes available again.

[zslane]

I'm not a huge fan of orange either, which is why I stayed away from the Carbon drop (it was the first SA set to come up after I got into all this). Green, purple, orange, and yellow are the colors I generally stay away from, though I can tolerate yellow under some circumstances (Skull Squadron not being one of them though). There are rumors of a Penumbra round 2, but it is purely vaporware at this point. It does, however, have the virtue of promising a genuinely sculptured profile, unlike the existing Penumbra which is way too fond of row 3 to be called truly sculptured.

[Intuition]

I am Zslane's friend that does the VFX work on linux systems much of the time. Yay terminal.

I can get around without the num pad but there are some great features and shortcuts, not to mention my own marking menus and key usage that make Maya ascend above the installed vanilla flavor and use most of the other keys too.

Yes, I was lured in to this world which had never occurred to me to look for before. Strange that I use keyboards everyday and didn't think to research anything better than the standard logitec keyboard.

I was shown the many keys, the different plastics, switches, and keyboards they can be all assembled into.

Once I was shown the configurator, I forget which site it was, I immediately went to work on an ideal keyboard design based simply around color alone that I came up with maybe 15 years ago. This was in a 3d renders of keyboards and mouse threads on a 3d forum which is long gone. Also gone is is the computer which I had the original images.

What is great is that I remember my Commodore 64 keyboard keys and zslane showed me the round caps, in glossy no less.

Interestingly enough my mom had cleaned out the basement and found our old packard bell 80286 12mhz.

What was interesting to me was how pleasant the keyboard actually was to type with. Very quiet (which I know is blasphemy in some circles around here) but the action had a minor resistance at the top and then eased up past the initial hit. Nothing as subtle as Topre but it gave me the sense that it had those rubber pads that simply give way after a little pressure and that it did a decent job. The angle of the keys is nice too. Was rather surprised that a run of the mill keyboard from the late 80s seems much more advanced than most stuff I see today.

My order was sent today and I'll probably be posting pics of the keyboard in 2016.

[__red__]

Model F-122 at work with the layout a bastardized combination of iso and ansi.

Model M-122 by one of the off-label brands (BOS? iirc) at home.

F is at work because that's where I do most of my keyboard work.

Should you worry about F or M noise in an open plan office? Nope, you spread the love.

There are three or four Model Ms or Fs within 4 cubes of mine all singing in glorious harmony

[vvp]

My K80CS exclusively:

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http://deskthority.net/post247068.html#p247068

[Hypersphere]

@zslane: Thanks for pointing out the pseudo-sculptured nature of the Penumbra set. I had not realized this. If the set is made available again, I hope that the rumor is correct that they may revise the set to be fully sculptured.

@Intuition: Welcome to DT! Yes, many of us value keyboards that click with a vengeance, but many of us also value relative silence. For me, it is contextual. I don't mind the noise with switches that I expect to be noisy, such as IBM buckling springs or Matias Click, but with switches that I expect to be quiet, such as Topre, the slightest extraneous noise becomes an irritant to be removed if possible. However, even with inherently noisy switches, there can be unwanted aspects, such as spring ping in a Model F that can be attenuated using techniques such as the "floss mod". Moreover, absolute silence in a keyboard would likely be anathema to most keyboard enthusiasts. Thus, while many might wish to "silence" their Topre keyboards, at the same time they would not want the trademark "thock" sound to disappear.

[JBert]

I stick to using a Soarer-modded Cherry G80-3000 with MX Clears at work because using buckling spring in an open plan office sounds obnoxious to me.

That means I can keep the Model F XT at home (also Soarer-modded though with its original layout) and enjoy the clicky goodness while not bothering too many people. I don't have too much trouble from the noise myself because some over-ear headphones can drown out the noise without even playing anything.

I do have a Poker (1) whith MX blacks for use with my company laptop but I only use it at home, and even then it's used sparingly as it doesn't have a trackpoint like the laptop has.

[Snowdog993]

I am still using my ol' trusty 1392595 with a 1398011 controller! Added LED's and LED overlay to give it that "classic" look and feel.



My daily driver.

[amospalla]

I am still using my ol' trusty 1392595 with a 1398011 controller! Added LED's and LED overlay to give it that "classic" look and feel.



My daily driver.

Why are you not using the one with trackpoint?

[TacticalCoder]

After years of IBM Model Ms and having tried many different switches I eventually settled on Topre. Used an HHKB Pro 2 for one year or so and now since two years I'm using an HHKB Pro JP (for the smaller spacebar and hence more and easier to reach modifiers).

Only "mod" is a cool double-short "CODE" key found on some old Brother typewriter which I put instead of "Esc".

Not into keyboards that much anymore now that I found that semi-grail that the HHKB Pro JP is for me. I still have all my keyboards though (split white ALPS board, Cherry MX-5000, lots of IBM Model Ms, ...).

[Snowdog993]

Why are you not using the one with trackpoint?

I could. I'm just using this one right now.