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Comment by psankar | Hacker News Reader

The best keyboard that I have personally used is the old IBM Thinkpad keys. They had a slight curve for accommodating touch typists, instead of the flat keys in the modern keyboards. I could type at 100+ WPM in the old IBM thinkpads even when I am sitting in a dark room. I struggle to reach around 80 wpm in the macbook pro and modern lenovo thinkpads.

The new macbook pro with the touchbar is the worst keyboard that I have ever used and I ended up buying an old model Macbook just because of the keyboard.

I wish Microsoft or Google releases a good developer oriented laptop with proper keyboard (Preferably licensing the old IBM thinkpad keyboard style) and full-size buttons for arrow keys, boatloads of extensible RAM and a gorgeous screen. Apple seem to not care anymore about macbooks :(

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The keyboard is the main reason i stick with my X220i, even though it's getting a bit long in the tooth and somewhat challenged in the CPU department. I certainly don't get anywhere near the rated uptime out of a battery, since it's working the CPU a lot harder now than with 2011-era software.

Still, the build quality and keyboard are absolutely second to none. Hardware- and build quality-wise the best laptop ever made. It's 7 years old, and the hinge is still as tight and smooth as a new one.

I wish I had gotten one of the full-size desktop Thinkpad-style USB keyboards, back when they still made them.

> I wish I had gotten one of the full-size desktop Thinkpad-style USB keyboards, back when they still made them.

They stopped? That's a shame, I was hoping they'd work out their quality issues. I really liked mine except that it seldom registered the letter j. Which was a real problem for me as a vi user. Not to mention typing passwords. I have the endura pro now, mainly for the pointing stick, but I find that the implementation is nowhere near as good as trackpoint. Also the endura pro seems to draw a heck of a lot of current.

Yeah, now they only make one with the new chiclet keyboard, and only as a compact model, with no numeric keypad.

They used to make one with the old-style Thinkpad keys, with a full 104/105-key layout, trackpoint and touchpad.

I've been using a Logitech Ultra Flat for almost a decade now, and while it seems to be holding up fine, it won't last forever (unlike a Thinkpad keyboard).

I have never seen a keyboard without curved keys.

Laptops with flat keys, yes, but laptop keyboards are a last resort.

Then you've had the good fortune of never having to use an Apple desktop keyboard made in the past 10 years.

Call me weird if you must, but I truly appreciate the Apple keyboards. Probably my favorite is the new model Bluetooth keyboard. I love the very very minimal key travel and low activation pressure. I used to have to use “natural” keyboards to keep carpel tunnel at bay, but the previously mentioned features seem to accomplish the same goal. My only nit with it is that I wish it was a full size keyboard including numeric keypad, but I’ve gotten used to not having it now. I also mostly like the new laptop keyboards too, but they can be a bit noisy for my taste when I’m typing fast, especially on the 2016 12” MacBook.

I agree. The best keyboard I've found to stave off finger and wrist pain is the Macbook keyboard. I've never tried the brand new one, but the 2015 and 2013 I have, the low key travel really helps the wrist pain a lot.

It is definitely a matter of personal preference. I am a big fan of the Thinkpad keyboards and despise the butterfly keyboards. Apple does still make a full layout version of the bluetooth keyboard though. Though thanks to the built in battery there probably won't be people 30 years from now writing articles about how much they love their retro Magic Keyboard.

> Apple does still make a full layout version of the bluetooth keyboard though.

Wow, somehow I had missed that. It also comes in Space Grey with black caps. Needless to say, going to grab one!

It was easy to miss, they introduced it a whopping 2 years later than the small version.

Amazon Basics keyboard has flat keys

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