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Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard

nickjanetakis.com

11–20 of 315 posts

Re: Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard

#13

This is blatant advertising on the front-page of HN. How did a post about a generic keyboard rise so high in such a short period of time?

I use this thing as my daily driver. It's not* just advertising. It's a darned good keyboard.

edit: apparently there's an affiliate link. Didn't see it on first read. Still a good keyboard imo though...

Re: Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard

#14
post #2

I don't even remember why scroll lock exists

It's an early implementation of the same idea as the mouse scroll wheel. Engage scroll lock, and the arrow keys are used for scrolling the current text view instead of moving the cursor.

The idea of also using it to pause scrolling console text, I think, originated in Linux.

Re: Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard

#16
>I’m sure you’ve seen keyboards where the lights of these keys are all grouped together near the top right of the keyboard instead of being on the key, such as what you see below:

>This comes down to poor UI design or bad tech choices. You want related things to be together. If I have caps lock on by accident, I want to be able to look at the caps lock key and see the light. I don’t want to have to look on the other side of the keyboard.

Completely disagree. I want to have all the status information in one easy and non-obstructed place. On my keyboard, when I have my hands on the home row, Cap Lock is obstructed by my pinky. Also, Cap lock is much further down from the top of the keyboard making the eye distance travel more to check it.

Re: Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard

#18

This is blatant advertising on the front-page of HN. How did a post about a generic keyboard rise so high in such a short period of time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising "Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea."

This is a personal message, and not openly sponsored. There is an affiliate link used, which is to say, the blog author likely hopes to make money off his post (even if that's not the primary impetus for his writing.)

As people that use products such as keyboards, I think we're receptive to well-documented personal messages about the products we enjoy using. I don't imagine anyone will get rich off this blog post, and I doubt that was the reason it was written.

Re: Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard

#19

This is blatant advertising on the front-page of HN. How did a post about a generic keyboard rise so high in such a short period of time?

I think the article is well written and brings up some good stuff to consider but I have a hard time appreciating any basic desktop keyboard recommendation for the HN crowd that is not an ergonomic keyboard.

If you're a professional who uses the keyboard regularly, unless you have some special needs or wants, why wouldn't you go with an ergonomic keyboard as the base option.

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