Yes, my keyboard hates me. It's my fault. I took it from it's cozy home on the shelf and plunged it into the torturous world of my home office. I chose to abuse it almost every minute of the day. Why shouldn't it hate me? It's too small for my hands. It's a tiny collection of cheap plastic and silicone-backed keys. It's so lightweight that the very act of typing on it makes it slide across the roll-out keyboard tray on my desk. It's junk. Of course it hates me - I hate it. So, I am turning to fellow writers in hopes of finding a solution to this ongoing feud between myself and my recalcitrant and inadequate keyboard. It's my hope that you can help me find a new one that is suitable for a writer that types at the speed of little clicky sounds and can't stand having their hands cramped when resting in a standard home position. My old faithful keyboard has no letters on it. My keybanging eventually rubbed off all the screenprinted ink on the keys. Someone who was not an accomplished typist familiar with a standard 101 keyboard would not be able to use it. But, I can no longer use it because I can not find a PS2-to-USB adapter that will work with it. Now, it rests in a retirement home for peripherals that is under my desk... I'm thinking about buying one of these: http://www.pckeyboard.com (Unicomp) For computer keyboard geeks, this is the Holy Grail. It's a company that reproduces the "buckling spring" IBM keyboard style. This is the old fashioned sort of "terminal" keyboard some of you might remember using? Remember those first IBM keyboards? You know, back when they were made of metal and could double as a personal protection device? Yeah, that's it. I miss the deepset keys and expansive room of these older keyboards. My own faithful keyboard was the same size as the above, but was made of plastic. Yet, it used the buckling spring technology and also had a silicone barrier to keep out the gunk. I took it apart and cleaned it, many times. I was intimately familiar with it and I suppose that is part of my problem. But, today, this little piece of junk I'm typing on causes me so many problems that it has effected my writing. I just find it twice as difficult to write decently using it and that's starting to really tick me off something fierce. Anyway, time to end this mini-rant: Do you have any suggestions for a good keyboard that you have found compliments your writing instead of compromising it? Feel free to list your experiences! Note: I forgot about the "The Lounge," so it may have been more appropriately posted there. However, this truly does deal directly with General Writing in the physical act of accomplishing that task for those of us who use computers. So, perhaps it can stay here?
I don't have any recommendations for you. From my experience with things like this, it's a 'to each their own' sort of thing. What I like, you may hate, and vice versa. My suggestion is to go to a store like Best Buy and try out their keyboards there, they should have them out on display. I do remember those keyboards you linked to, but by now I'm so used to a laptop that I'd have a hard time getting used to that old style again.
I've been to every store that I can find that has such displays, and all the keyboards there are just too darn... crappy. It's not that they're all cheap, it's that they're just not very friendly to someone who has been typing since he was single-digits. I learned to type on this: Pic - Underwood Typewriter No, I'm not ancient. (In my 40's.) My family just happened to have one and I loved typing on it. I still have it and its original leather cover! Anyway, I learned to type before I was 10, though not the standard way, and learned to type all over again on electrics and computers in high-school. So, for me, I'm used to something a bit more substantial than the current fare that is offered, these days. Not too long ago, I was doing some writing in a bookstore when I was out of town. I asked them what sort of pens they had and the clerk told me all they had were the ones that were too expensive. I had her show them to me and they weren't Monte Blanc or Watermans, but cheap ten dollar jobs. If I get to write comfortably with good ink coming out of a good pen then ten bucks is not "expensive." What I write with it, however, is expensive.. I hope. For myself, the tools I use are important and this darn flimsy thing on my desk is about to become the least important thing at the bottom of a garbage can.
There is your answer. If love breeds love - then I wonder, what does hate breed? Maybe it just needs a bit of TLC. On serious note - by a new one. I can think of nothing more distracting than, unsuitable equipment.
To the OP, I learned how to type on one of those. We had a computer when I was in the single digits too, and I'm not that much younger than you. I suggest you either buy the one you linked to.....or just get over it and adapt to the keyboards of the modern age.
