On: How and Why I Stopped Buying New Laptops (2020)

[mikepurvis]

Even if it is, most of the keys are interchangeable. Your fingers don’t care that the M key has an N on it.

[mbreese → mikepurvis]

With my mechanical keyboard, I have had a tendency to break a few (specific) keys. I got around it by 3D printing a few blank keys.

So long as I know where the N and M keys are, that's all that matters :)

[idiotsecant → mbreese]

How are you people breaking so many keys?!

[jessekv → idiotsecant]

Maybe they learned to type on a mechanical typewriter...

[mbreese → jessekv]

For me, you’re not far off… it was an electric typewriter. So, the force I applied wasn’t directly linked to the force of hitting the paper, but it was … ahem … robust. Between that, the IBM Model M clone we had on the PC, or the membrane keyboard in our Atari 400, my early muscle memory might be skewed.

Now though, we’re talking mainly laptop keyboards. My desk keyboard is a low profile keyboard with pretty thin keys (Keytron K2). If you hit them at the right angle, there’s not much plastic there to absorb the shock.

[marssaxman → mikepurvis]

As a lifelong Dvorak user, for whom the keys I press have never produced the letters printed on them, it amuses me that the "M" key is one of only two exceptions (the other is "A").