minimalist keyboards - WHY?

Chyros · 02 Jan 2016, 14:42

OK, so I'm really curious about this now. What is it with wanting to have tiny keyboards?

People pay several times more to get an SSK as opposed to a normal Model M. They pay top dollar to get rare space-saving versions of keyboards. Someone undertook the Herculean effort to recreate Kishsavers, a spared-no-expense venture (I've seen the unit cost). HHKB users do with only 60% of their buttons and they love it, others think even that's too much and they painstakingly custom-cuild their own 40% layout.

To me, this is baffling. There aren't a lot of keys I don't use on a keyboard myself, so paying MORE to get LESS sounds very strange to me. I own very few <100% keyboards, and I actually think that the bigger a keyboard is, the cooler it looks. Now I'm not here to convince people to use big keyboards (not that I could if I wanted to), but I really want to know. Therefore, I pose the question; tiny keyboard users, what is it that you like so much about small form factors?

photekq · 02 Jan 2016, 14:46

For some people it's not a matter of minimalism. It's a matter of portability and being able to have their mouse in a more comfortable position. I know I find TKL boards to be a hell of a lot more comfortable than fullsize ones.

scottc · 02 Jan 2016, 14:58

I, personally, can't use full-sized boards anymore. It forces my hands to be very wide apart, causing a reasonable amount of discomfort after extended use.

I mostly use 60% keyboards since that's what I happen to have found at good prices, but I like TKLs just as much. With 60%s in particular, I find it a lot more comfortable moving my hands very little away from the home row.

I have a working 40% board (ne0phyte's THKB) that I bought to support a friend's project and for soldering fun, but I wouldn't use it as a daily driver. Though, that said, ne0phyte himself has said that he used the THKB as his main keyboard for a while and found it very comfortable.

I'm probably in a fairly niche situation since I've had rheumatoid arthritis since a young age, but others complain about the same problem frequently so it can't just be me.

Matt_ · 02 Jan 2016, 15:02

Chyros wrote: ↑paying MORE to get LESS sounds very strange to me.

Because you're only looking at a small part of a picture.

Fewer keys? Sure. But more space on your desk. Better portability. Less hand movement (which is a plus) to reach all keys. And so on...

Hypersphere · 02 Jan 2016, 15:11

For me, it is part ergonomic and part aesthetic. Initially, I started looking at TKLs because a shoulder injury made it painful to reach past my full-size Model M for the mouse. Eventually, I discovered 60% boards -- all the better ergonomically, but also pleasing aesthetically. I like the symmetry of a 60%. I must admit, I also enjoy the minimalism -- the notion that 60 keys on my HHKB are sufficient.

kbdfr · 02 Jan 2016, 16:07

photekq wrote: ↑[…] It's a matter of portability and being able to have their mouse in a more comfortable position. […]

Matt_ wrote: ↑[…] Fewer keys? Sure. But more space on your desktop. Better portability. Less hand movement (which is a plus) to reach all keys. And so on...

"mouse in a more comfortable position":
A more logical answer would be a centered device like a trackpoint or a RollerMouse, and/or a keyboard having not just fewer columns, but also more rows.
"Less hand movement (which is a plus) to reach all keys":
When combos are used instead of pressing a single key, it would be fair to add the movements of both hands and/or the one-hand distorsion effort. And, see above, not to forget the movements necessary to grasp the mouse.
"a matter of portability", "Better portability":
I suppose most users don't transport their keyboard at all (I personally don't know a single one who does). Additionally, for some of those who do probably it will actually be the other way round: they are forced to take their keybards with them because they use a not-so-common layout and wouldn't have to if they didn't.
"More space on your desktop":
On most setups published in the corresponding photo thread, there is barely anything else than the keyboard on the desktop.

caligo · 02 Jan 2016, 16:12

My desktop, or whatever one should call it, is only 78 cm wide (that's about 30 inches, for you Americans). I couldn't fit a full size keyboard and a mouse even if I wanted to – at least not in any ergonomically reasonable way. I would probably still use a 60 % or TKL board for economical reasons even if I had more space, but at the moment that's not even an option.

codemonkeymike · 02 Jan 2016, 16:18

I have 2 reasons for a smaller keyboard, First there are not 103key ergodox, Second to have my hands closer to my mouse. I was actually getting bad shoulder pain from how far my mouse was from my home row with my Das Keyboard.

Matt_ · 02 Jan 2016, 16:23

kbdfr wrote: ↑
photekq wrote: ↑[…] It's a matter of portability and being able to have their mouse in a more comfortable position. […]

Matt_ wrote: ↑[…] Fewer keys? Sure. But more space on your desktop. Better portability. Less hand movement (which is a plus) to reach all keys. And so on...

"mouse in a more comfortable position":
A more logical answer would be a centered device like a trackpoint or a RollerMouse, and/or a keyboard having not just fewer columns, but also more rows.

"Less hand movement (which is a plus) to reach all keys":
When combos are used instead of pressing a single key, it would be fair to add the movements of both hands and/or the one-hand distorsion effort. And, see above, not to forget the movements necessary to grasp the mouse.

"a matter of portability", "Better portability":
I suppose most users don't transport their keyboard at all (I personally don't know a single one who does). Additionally, for some of those who do probably it will actually be the other way round: they are forced to take their keybards with them because they use a not-so-common layout and wouldn't have to if they didn't.

"More space on your desktop":
On most setups published in the corresponding photo thread, there is barely anything else than the keyboard on the desktop.

We could argue endlessly but there would be no point to it since I'm sure that we'll agree that in the end it comes down to personal preference

What I wanted to say was that it is simplistic to say "you pay more to get less". You don't get less, just something different.

kbdfr · 02 Jan 2016, 16:33

One of the main problems seems to be the mouse, not the keyboard.

Why just reduce the problem by using another kind of keyboard,
instead of eliminating it by using another kind of mouse?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CONTOUR-ROLLE ... 1898087873

Matt_ wrote: ↑[…] I'm sure that we'll agree that in the end it comes down to personal preference […]

Indeed.
Or in other words: You pay more to get less

seebart · 02 Jan 2016, 16:42

Very good question Chyros. I've tried everything from 122 down to a 60% and my conclusion is I like TKL but I don't need it. It does not bother me to have to move my hand and reach over to the right to my mouse when using full size. Sure it's slighty more practical to have the mouse closer to me but I don't necessarily need it closer. Now when I'm on the road and I want to /need to have a keyboard with me I'll take my FC660C and that's very convenient, but on my desk it's full size or TKL. And to answer your question it's also a style thing, people like the looks of smaller keyboards. Aesthetics is a big deal.

fohat · 02 Jan 2016, 16:52

I have a large desk so "saving space" is not a criteria for me. If I was carrying gear around I might sing a different tune.

A huge heavy keyboard set on a sturdy rubber mat equates to minimal effort typing, since there is absolutely no motion, no matter how hard or gently I press the keys.

Since I use the numpad dozens of times daily, nothing smaller than a "full-size" is an option, and I also use many (but not all) of my "navigation" keys constantly.

Last, with the large desk, I keep mice on both sides and pick up the one that is most convenient at the time.

Muirium · 02 Jan 2016, 17:02

Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a keyboard so vast that you never had to press any chords at all. There's two number rows, so you can hit !@#$ etc. without Shift. And there's a whole second alpha block just for UPPER CASE ALL BY ITSELF.

Anyone here fancy that epic layout? It'll hog the living crap out of your workspace. And moving your hands around that much would slow you right down. But the purity! You could have two RollerMouses under there, easy. And don't forget the TrackPoints!

We all chord. Minimalist keyboards like 60%s merely increase this. All the logical keys are still there. Just like that SECOND ALPHA BLOCK evilly hidden away behind a function key (called Shift) on your battleship!

in10did · 02 Jan 2016, 17:48

or you can go with a real minimalist keyboard and chord most things. DecaTxt is one-handed so you never have to drop the mouse to type. It's Bluetooth so you don't even need to sit at the desk to type and it works with BLE tablets & phones. If you want more than 10 keys, try the Twiddler 3 (it has 16) or if you can do with less, try the 7 key BAT. http://amzn.to/1ONCb88

Hypersphere · 02 Jan 2016, 17:49

60% keyboards fit into smaller boxes than those required for larger keyboards. Therefore, you can store more 60% keyboards on your shelves and your keyboard rotation can have more variety.

davkol · 02 Jan 2016, 18:07

Muirium wrote: ↑Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a keyboard so vast that you never had to press any chords at all.

It doesn't even have to be a thought experiment. Just look how Asian input methods evolved over time.

@OP, full-size keyboards just don't work for me. There isn't enough space on my tray or in my backpack. I do have a rollermouse, but don't like it very much, because it's quite imprecise and feels a bit cheap; I can't justify paying €200+ for one of the newer models. I'm not a fan of trackpoints either, due to caps aging fast. Besides, I'm not used to the extra key clusters either. A 75% keyboard has all the keys, that I need, almost in one place.

I thought about keyboard design a bit last night, and concluded, that I'd be happy with a split symmetrical keyboard, equipped with 2×18 keys and 4-8 modifiers/toggles (mirrored on both sides). Typing on such a keyboard consists of a few familiar simple motions, just like the aforementioned Asian scripts' characters are composed of simpler strokes/radicals.

jerue · 02 Jan 2016, 19:11

I too cannot use full-size boards anymore. I prefer the distance between my hands and mouse, it feels a bit more "ergo" than full-size boards. That said if there were more "lefty" keyboards with numpads on the left I wouldn't be against this.

I have a 60% and it's fantastic for saving space on the desk (it makes my SSK look so bulky

). I could live with 65%. Then there's the portability factor...for the 2 times I have taken my 60% somewhere

KRKS · 02 Jan 2016, 20:15

Personally, I don't like small keyboards because they're too small(if you need two Fn layers you went way overboard). However, I like that they bring more important stuff closer to you, and they center the whole board roughly somewhere between F and J.

Spoiler:

Check this random and not really usable layout I cobbled up in three minutes. It's just one key narrower than a fullsize board, yet the travel distance for quite a few things is reduced by a lot. With things like left-hand tenkey(which in here doubles as the number row because I felt like making something symmetrical, but I wouldn't use a keyboard without a normal numrow), thumb Enter(yeah, Golbat finally sold me on the idea of split spacebar) and home row Backspace, you suddenly get the sub-60% board's benefits, except you still have 86 keys. And hey, the mouse is a lot closer too(unless you're a southpaw)!

EDIT: Here's a much more standard one that still does the centering and increases mouse room

Spoiler:

zslane · 02 Jan 2016, 20:54

I asked the same thing last summer. If you look at forum threads on GH with subjects like, "Favorite Keyboard," you will see that often times the only people who respond are people in love with HHKBs or some other Topre-based 60%er. But I don't think these people represent the majority of the keyboard using public, only the most devoted and vocal minority of the very niche mech keyboard community. But since they make the most noise, it is easy to get the impression that the whole world is moving to tiny keyboards. They sure make me feel like a dinosaur...

Yet despite their enthusiasm, their reasoning is not compelling to me, even though it may be perfectly valid for them. To wit:

Desk space did not shrink that drastically over the last 30 years. I am crammed in close to my working neighbors about as badly as anyone, but I still have plenty of room for a full size keyboard, a mouse, and an iPad (with a Pok3r). Same with my desk at home. Maybe it's because I don't clutter my workspaces up with other junk, leaving me with room for the important necessities.
And while portability sounds useful, I have a keyboard at work and a keyboard at home and I don't have to carry anything around with me, just as I suspect is the case for most folks (not all, but most).
When it comes to hand position, well, the chair I sit in has arm rests. Those arm rests are spaced apart such that my hands land on the WASD cluster on the left and my mouse on the right, with a full navcluster and numpad in between.
As for joint health, I've been using full keyboards for 35 years and I've never acquired any kind of injury, repetitive stress or otherwise, as a consequence. Again, I suspect that the majority of full-keyboard-injury sufferers are rare medical cases and not the norm.

I am like Chyros in that when I spend my money on, for instance, a beautiful keycap set, I want to see as much of that keycap set on display as possible, while also enjoying the benefits of a standardized layout. That's why it is ANSI 104 (or 108) whenever possible. I only use a 60%er with my iPad because it suits the space available in front of my iPad and it suits the limited use I have for it (typing forum posts mostly).

Many of the more prominent members of forums like these may be in love with reduced footprint keyboards, but that does not mean they are becoming the norm. It just means we have to read about it constantly.

SL89 · 02 Jan 2016, 21:03

I love my fullsize, I want a battleship, but I also want to try a smaller board. First the JD40 slipped through my grasp, then i missed out on some other stuff, and the HyperMicro is on a rolling deadline. I like the idea of layers and i wouldnt mind using them extensively. For me its purely a simplicity thing. But I know that I'm gonna need it to be heavy as fuck with the way i hammer these keys. Greens are light for me these days after all. Most smaller boards favor lightness, light switches and thin materials. Are there any really substantial smaller boards?

jerue · 02 Jan 2016, 21:15

SL89 wrote: ↑I love my fullsize, I want a battleship, but I also want to try a smaller board. First the JD40 slipped through my grasp, then i missed out on some other stuff, and the HyperMicro is on a rolling deadline. I like the idea of layers and i wouldnt mind using them extensively. For me its purely a simplicity thing. But I know that I'm gonna need it to be heavy as fuck with the way i hammer these keys. Greens are light for me these days after all. Most smaller boards favor lightness, light switches and thin materials. Are there any really substantial smaller boards?

If that upcoming JD45 keeps the designed alu case it'll be extremely substantial. My 60% is in an alu TEX, and I go hard on my tactile greys...no issues.

SL89 · 02 Jan 2016, 21:32

Thanks for that, the alu cases just have always seemed very light to me. Ik there will be a v2 JD40 as well

chiptea · 02 Jan 2016, 21:54

Usually when typing, I like having the main body of the board directly in front of me. Usually what happens with full size boards is that I have to move them to the left to accommodate a mouse due to the numpad, and end up off centre. With a 60%, you can put the board right in the middle, aligned with your monitor. For me it's aesthetically pleasing and more comfortable.

infodroid · 02 Jan 2016, 22:40

Muirium wrote: ↑Here's a thought experiment. Imagine a keyboard so vast that you never had to press any chords at all.

The "diabolical" Hyper7 comes to mind:

Muirium · 02 Jan 2016, 23:08

Of course. But still ONLY ONE ALPHA section? Pah. Too small. Needs more Hyper!

Also: 8 rows is inefficient. It could devastate so much more desk space by being significantly wider instead. Ideally the user should have to move his chair to reach the mouse.

Parjánya · 02 Jan 2016, 23:24

I've always (~22 years) used a full keyboard until last year, when I got a tenkeyless one. I think I can understand, at least in part, both sides of this.

It's ok to have a full keyboard and a mouse, there are reports of people being able to live like that, me included : o ); on the other side, a tenkeyless keyboard... and I would imagine the smaller ones just help with this... enables you to have the center of the keyboard nearer to the natural position of the hands, and the mouse also. I'm writing on a full keyboard right now, and I'm either slightly with the keyboard slightly to the left, or with the mouse slightly to the right. I do miss my tenkeyless keyboard, specially now that I've got a temporarily smaller table...

That said, I wouldn't mind having a Hyper7 in the least. The fun of that amount of keys makes any possible discomfort quite irrelevant : o ). I wouldn't get efficiency get in the way of cheer fun. All those keys... [drools].

Muirium · 02 Jan 2016, 23:38

The real problem of the Hyper7 — besides the fact 7bit has no cases planned to mount the gigantic PCB inside — is a lot of those extra keys have no function in the USB HID keyboard spec. Which means actually getting them to function on your computer may be… awkward. He threw his GB template at it without thinking through the functions, I think. I've no idea how to use it.

Here's my trick for using fullsize keyboards: mouse with your left hand. Besides the Hyper7, most battleships are so lopsided that the alpha block is at the left edge of the keyboard where it should be. I can handle fullsize boards quite easily that way. Usually with a multitouch trackpad. (No way I could ever bear a clunky TrackPoint or RollerMouse. I'm used to higher bandwidth than the primeval 2D pointer + 1D scroll metaphor.)

But there's simply no using a fullsize on my lap. It hangs out so far to the right. While the little HHKB here is dead centred and a great little couch keyboard as well as at the desk!

bocahgundul · 03 Jan 2016, 00:20

I think minimalist keyboard like 60% is for someone who goes travelling with their job but they want to use their laptop. And the 40% is for mobile phone right or tablet, people who doesn't want to use their touch screen keyboard. Because thats what I think if someone wants to use a mini keyboard

infodroid · 03 Jan 2016, 01:31

The design of mainstream keyboards today is intimately connected with what passes as mainstream computing.

For example, it is impossible to be productive in Microsoft Word without the use of cursor keys and the nav cluster. The same is true for Microsoft Excel, with the addition of numpad and function keys.

Thankfully the MS-DOS lineage is by no means the only computing paradigm today.

In the UNIX tradition, the keyboard is the primary input device. Yet it is ironic that, unlike point-and-click systems today, UNIX programs do not typically require extended keys.

I suspect that as MS-DOS started to dominate computing it kicked off a keyboard arms race. This can been seen, for example, in the steady increase in the number of keys on Sun Microsystems keyboards.

Professor Eiiti Wada had the good sense to put a stop to this madness and revive something of the design of the Sun Type-3 keyboard. And I think we owe him a debt of gratitude for the popularity of 60% keyboards today.

As a Linux user myself, I have been fortunate in that I am able to control all the applications that I use solely through Vi key bindings.

The Vi editor and its descendants were designed with the ergonomic goal of keeping fingers on the home row to maintain speed, accuracy, and high concentration. I'm sure that Emacs users follow a similar philosophy.

You can read more about this idea in the essay Zenclavier: Extreme Keyboarding, though somewhat programmer-oriented.

As a long-time Vim user, I find it difficult to convey just how massive a productivity boost this is. If you do not believe me, you will have to try it for yourself or else observe a competent Vi or Emacs user at work.

A few years ago I realised that I had stopped using the cursor, numpad, function and nav cluster keys on a daily basis. Yet they still occupied space on my desk. And it struck me that they were ugly.

Speaking of aesthetics, I agree with other comments here about centering. It is satisfying that the mid-point of the keyboard aligns with that of the monitor. Like with the old video terminals.

I don't care very much for fashion. I find whatever works for me and stick with it. But in this case I am grateful for the popularity of 60% keyboards. Because it means I have a lot more choice and quality.

It's also worth pointing out that modern 60% keyboards are cheaper than their full-size counterparts. At least when it comes to specialist mech brands, where the cost of materials dominates the economies of scale.

So yes Chyros, I would go that extra mile for a Kishsaver or SSK. Though I draw the line at 40% keyboards, I think they are better as switch testers, phone keyboards, or DIY board experiments.

Muirium · 03 Jan 2016, 02:19

Well that's all fine and well. But Mr. Chochead will still tell you how you're doing it wrong. And by the phrasing of the question, I reckon Chyros will still agree with him.

Keyboard size preference is one of those subjective things where we can all agree to disagree loudly and repeatedly! It's something that chooses you rather than the other way around.