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The 40% Keyboard

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Re: The 40% Keyboard

#31

Post by Tarks »

TylerE wrote: post #26
dangus wrote: post #7

Call me cynical, but I think a lot of the small style keyboards I see around the office are more of a fashion trend than anything. I remember when the insistence was on number pads, and how dare they be removed from our laptops and desktop keyboards. Fast forward a few years and I was made fun of at a programming job for preferring a full keyboard with a number pads. I guess programmers are too cool to enter in dolla…

This is a real annoyance of mine. None of the real nice mechanical keyboards are available in a fullsize layout. A numpad is NOT negotiable for me...several creative apps I regularly use use the numpad for control (and no, the regular number row keys ARE NOT mapped to the same commands).

Bought a Corsair K95 a year or so ago and it's fantastic for me, even bought a second for the office. Pricey but it's worth it.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#32

Post by toast0 »

terandle wrote: post #20
dangus wrote: post #7

Call me cynical, but I think a lot of the small style keyboards I see around the office are more of a fashion trend than anything. I remember when the insistence was on number pads, and how dare they be removed from our laptops and desktop keyboards. Fast forward a few years and I was made fun of at a programming job for preferring a full keyboard with a number pads. I guess programmers are too cool to enter in dolla…

No numpad is an ergonomic benefit. Your mouse is closer so you don't have to move your hand as far. The best way to have a numpad if you really need one, I have found, is to have a separate one like how the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard does it.

Left mousing provides a similar benefit, plus it confuses people who use your terminal -- left mouse and unlabeled keys is basically hacker proof.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#33

Post by geowwy »

TACIXAT wrote: post #4

Getting a (read: multiple) 60% keyboard really changed my life. It makes a lot more sense for not offsetting the mouse way to the right or the keyboard to the left (as you would with a full size). As well, not having to strain my wrist to hit arrow keys got rid of any pain I had. It's awesome having everything under my hands. I'll definitely follow this 40% project.

I had the opposite experience. My 60% keyboard ruined my hands with RSI.

I strongly recommend Xah Lee's advice to anyone suffering from RSI: http://xahlee.info/kbd/ergonomic_keyboards_index.html

In my opinion the ideal setup for people people with RSI is a 80% keyboard, a seperate number pad, and a programmable keypad for commonly used shortcuts.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#34

Post by wy35 »

I've built a Planck (40% ortho) and I can say for sure that I personally don't find the short finger travel between keys to be worth having to hit two keys to type a number, for example. Instead of moving one finger an extra row to type a number, I now have to move two fingers.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#35

Post by choward »

kranner wrote: post #13
dangus wrote: post #7

Call me cynical, but I think a lot of the small style keyboards I see around the office are more of a fashion trend than anything. I remember when the insistence was on number pads, and how dare they be removed from our laptops and desktop keyboards. Fast forward a few years and I was made fun of at a programming job for preferring a full keyboard with a number pads. I guess programmers are too cool to enter in dolla…

> [1] This makes no sense because the colored keys imply you enjoy looking at your keys and their unlabeled nature implies that you don’t need to look at your keys while you type. i.e. a fashion trend. But you could still enjoy looking at your keyboard with the coloured keys while not using it to type at that exact moment.

It sounds like you both agree then. It's for fashion.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#36

Post by TylerE »

Tarks wrote: post #31
TylerE wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real annoyance of mine. None of the real nice mechanical keyboards are available in a fullsize layout. A numpad is NOT negotiable for me...several creative apps I regularly use use the numpad for control (and no, the regular number row keys ARE NOT mapped to the same commands).

Bought a Corsair K95 a year or so ago and it's fantastic for me, even bought a second for the office. Pricey but it's worth it.

Thats...not quite a meant by high end. I mean stuff like a bespoke PCB so you can change all the switches out, an aluminum case... one of those $500+ custom jobs that /r/mechanicalkeyboards likes to drool over.

It's a very very deep rabbit hole.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#37

Post by pugworthy »

Another person here who went to a 60% and I really enjoy it. I have built two with custom switch setups, one for gaming and one for general typing.

There's a lot of satisfying craftsmanship to buying a circuit board here, a case there, switches matching your style of typing, and lastly keycaps that have a nice aesthetic and color balance.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#38

Post by jacobolus »

wy35 wrote: post #34

I've built a Planck (40% ortho) and I can say for sure that I personally don't find the short finger travel between keys to be worth having to hit two keys to type a number, for example. Instead of moving one finger an extra row to type a number, I now have to move two fingers.

The problem here is not the lack of an additional row of number keys, but the poor other choices in physical keyboard layout (based on largely following the historical pattern of a 19th century typewriter design; in the “planck” example with an arbitrary ergonomically-useless horizontal shifting of the rows). It also doesn’t work very well to put the numbers on a shifted layer but all on the same row, requiring 8 fingers across both hands to type them.

If you re-arrange the keyboard into a shape according with human hand/arm ergonomics (of particular relevance for chording, moving or extending thumb keys toward the body; the standard spacebar and modifiers are not especially comfortable), and use a thumb key located in a convenient spot for the layer shift, with the numbers typed using the fingers of the opposite hand, then chorded numbers are just fine: more comfortable and efficient than the standard approach of putting numbers on a separate row.

For cases when many numbers must be typed in sequence, making that layer shift key into an optional mode switch (to effectively turn half the keyboard into a numpad) works pretty well.

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#39

Post by briantakita »

One can make a programmable matrix layout keyboard with Two Koolertron keyboards. While it may be a bit bigger than the 40% keyboard, it's small, programmable, & has 96 keys or 94 keys in 3 toggleable layouts.

Gamers tend to use it has an extended numpad but I use it as my general keyboard with bespoke tilting upwards toward the middle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076LRJ528?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar...

Re: The 40% Keyboard

#40

Post by dahx4Eev »

gregoryl wrote: post #10
xwdv wrote: post #2

If you’re going to go small you might as well go all the way and get a 30% keyboard like the Gherkin. Very portable and not too bad as long as you’re willing to work with layers.

Anywhere you know of that sells them (mostly?) assembled?

Look for custom keyboard pcb sellers, or /r/mechmarket
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