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Comment by jonnismash | Hacker News Reader

at that point - get a cheap windows machine that can remote-into your mac, why deal with the nightmare, over and over again?

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Or, you know, use an external USB keyboard like a normal person.

Using an external keyboard for a laptop is silly to me unless I have it docked on a workstation. I do it, but I hate it.

why? you hate to develop on a 34" WQHD+ monitor?

YOu'd rather sit at a desk and squint at a 15" screen and hands on a non ergo keyboard?

I think you misunderstood the previous poster. He wrote he hates to use an external keyboard with a laptop that is not docked. He didn't write he hates docking the laptop. And indeed, I would consider it odd that you have to carry an additional keyboard together with your laptop.

I had a broken keyboard for my macbook air. The fix for it was a new logic board, and this was past warranty. So the only way around was an external keyboard. But this just defeats the portability of a laptop.

> I had a broken keyboard

> The fix for it was a new logic board

This was saddening to read.

question is, why should anyone do it after having paid truck load of money for a supposedly a cutting edge laptop.

portability is useful when you need it. If you are sitting at a desk, ability to dock into a desktop setup is king.

https://medium.com/lim-less-is-more/sonshi-style-a-style-of-...

That’s what i do !! Of course, its because my msi key keyboard (which was amazing) now has a bunch of keys that do not work (e, x, z - the first is the most used letter of the alphabet, the other i use constantly when doing VR and using vim (i replaced x by vd, but yanking had to be remapped).

For a while it was just x and y so i could copy paste from abc.xyz. But that started seriously hurting my fingers after a while. When the e broke, i decided to get an external keyboard. Though now i need a suitecase to move it around (17in gamer laptop + huge charger + external keyboard, kill me), it works great !!

(Also, right ctrl does not work either, but mine is mapped to caps lock).

My friend has an msi as well and same keys have started failing. Quick googling and i found a lot of msi laptops have (had?) this problem, though msi doesnt care. I cannot wait to have some money to get myself a new laptop. Its a shame though, this keyboard was amazing. Too bad it died in less than 2 years....

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