Comment by codefreakxff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codefreakxff | Hacker News Reader

I don't normally comment, but this author and I strongly disagree on the ideal keyboard on almost .every. .single. .point., in fact there is no need to enumerate them because I disagree with all of them.

But, the most glaring problem is the idealized keyboard for a laptop being one with a 10 key area. When you sit down at a desktop you can position the external keyboard to center the G/H keys in the middle of your monitor and type comfortably. If you shift the G/H to the left it makes you move your arms to the left for 99.9999% of your typing - unless you still do 10-key data entry for some reason.

The second overall problem I have is the idea that you need dozens of keys that are not essential to the function of your ability to TYPE on the laptop. Sure, you could have a button to disable the wireless on your laptop - but this is exactly the kind of key that SHOULDN'T be on a laptop. I have had to "fix" so many laptops by re-pressing the wireless toggle key that I have been tempted to physically break the key.

I'm only ranting here just incase any keyboard designers think this article has any merit and tries to design a laptop-keyboard-from-hell like this.

Just don't.

https://youtu.be/doEZMNXz1JY

Louis did a nice video on the older keyboard/trackpad vs the newer ones, which I agree with. Modern keyboards actually aren't bad, but the trackpads are terrible. The entire design of having left and right click as just one big flat button causes so many issues.

That's because trackpads are now used to control as you would on a phone/tablet : tap for single click, double tap for double-click, two-finger tap for right click, pinch to zoom, etc.

Ideally, there would still be buttons to allow both types of control though.

Talk about irritating. A laptop is not a phone/tablet. A laptop, even a tiny netbook, is big enough to allow the LUXURY of haptic feedback, so why not provide it?!

Apple's trackpads provide haptic feedback. If you push them gently, there is a soft click, if you push them more, there is a hard click.

An additional benefit over hard buttons is that applications can use it for additional feedback. E.g. OmniGraffle provides subtle haptic feedback via the trackpad when objects align, which I find extremely handy for quickly aligning objects.

I like distinct buttons. I like being able to tell by feel where my fingers are. I lose track of my finger's position on a big trackpad where the only clues to finger position are the edges of the pad. This leads to touch leakage: you go click but you touch halfway in the button area and half-way in the trackpad area and so the mouse pointer jumps as you click, thus clicking on the wrong thing. Talk about irritating!

I personally love the huge trackpads Apple builds. Especially the double tap right-click and all the swipe features. I think the dedicated button ones are super inconvenient, because you’d have to move your finger there instead of clicking/tapping anywhere

I really do love using my older thinkpad's keyboard. Especially the layout as Louis pointed out, is amazing.

My laptop has 2 physical buttons, but the lack of a middle mouse button irritates me. A huge amount of the web browsing I do involves opening links in new tabs with the middle mouse button.

I started doing it with ctrl-left click on laptops a long time ago...but it's an annoying switch if I've been using a desktop or an external mouse all day.

My laptop has 2 sets of 3 physical buttons (HP zbook 15). Unfortunately it's got a number pad that puts the touchpad and the space bar out of center. I have to shift the whole laptop to the right and place the main windows on the left to have them where my eyes are. The only 15" laptop without that issue was a Mac but it comes with a top bar and a global menu which are worse issues IMHO.

It seems that most people but developers like and actually use number pads. I think I touched it ten times in 3 years, included checking that it worked.

I think you misunderstood the article re. the number pad - it argues against number pads on laptops.

"Last laptop ever made with excellent keyboard design? (Lenovo Thinkpad T520, fr 2011)" - no numpad.

The IBM Model M keyboard is just raised as the prototypical desktop keyboard design, and the numpad there is commented as "Separate number pad possible on large keyboard without disturbing main keyboard" - which is hard to argue against.

Also if you mouse, a vestigial numeric keypad makes you reach much farther right. Pointless unless you’re a data entry clerk.

>> Pointless unless you’re a data entry clerk.

A lot of heavy Excel users would disagree.

You might make the argument that using Excel is like being a data entry clerk, but having actually having had a job as a data entry clerk in the 80s, I can tell you it is not the same thing.

Or a Blender user.

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