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Comment by adamnemecek | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised no one has said this yet but I can testify that a numpad keyboard on a laptop is like the worst ergonomic design that is somehow currently still popular. It's one of the things where I literally cannot comprehend how someone would think that it is ok.

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How is it any worse than the rest of the keyboard, in terms of ergonomics?

I just found this which says exactly what my thoughts are

http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-stupidest-trend-...

The group therapy laptop UX comments on that post are hilarious.

That's a fairly compelling argument, but I definitely have had times where I wished for a numpad on my Macbook, mainly so that I could play games that required them (I went through a few months where I played through several traditional roguelikes, and this isn't uncommon in that genre, though vikeys is more common and far better IMO).

Fortunately, there are lots of hardware solutions to that problem.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&De...

I can testify that I would not buy a laptop without a numpad, it's in my opinion absolutely essential. I literally cannot comprehend how someone wouldn't want one.

As you can see, it's all a matter of opinion.

That's cool and all but the thing that rustles my jimmies is that most non-Apple laptops have numpads. If it were 50/50 I would not complain, I complain because it's hard to find a good non-Apple laptop without it.

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