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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

I feel like a bit of a weirdo here - I love having a full sized, standard layout keyboard. It makes me move my hands, which helps with RSI-type strains on my hands. It allows me to use the same muscle memory no matter what keyboard I find myself at (I currently have four, two of which are heavily used). And I can find any rarely-used key by touch.

That said, I love the idea of a sub-30g actuation force for a key. More of those, switch companies! And I appreciate that more and more choices are available for people who aren’t me. :)

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No problem, by comparison the old-school weirdo's like full-size keyboards with F1-F10 on the left (compare hitting Control-F8 with the keys on the left compared to above the top row [0]).

Really old-school weirdo's were not happy with switching the position of the Control/Caps key (Control-C was so much easier on a VT100).

[0] https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?t=17462

I'm not an expert, but from the small amount that I've read part of the theory behind these tiny keyboards is that its actually the extra movement that causes RSI, not the typing itself, so they accommodate keeping your hands in the same position at all times and only moving your fingers at most one key from the home row.

I'm pretty hype to try the Keychron K1: https://www.keychron.com/

I think the "tenkeyless" layout is great: it's "full keyboard" size including the separated arrows block and correctly spaced F keys, it's just missing the numpad section that I rarely use.

It's also the "chiclet" style keys like a laptop keyboard, but with "low profile" switches that I'm hoping will feel good but be less painful than full-on cherry/gaming switches. I grew up on Model-M's, I used to love hammering away, but I guess I'm one of the weirdos that grew to love the feel of chiclet, where I can tell if I've pressed a key but don't need to press it so hard. But most chiclet keyboards are too low-quality with not quite enough travel. Balancing act.

Great, a new keyboard rabbit hole to go down. :D

I’m sort of in the same boat. I using “gaming” keyboards because I love the extra keys. I program them to do all kinds of things and don’t mind taking my hands off the home row if it means I can do something faster or without having to use the mouse. They always end up customized enough that my two main computers have to have the same keyboard or I get a little lost.

I’d love something like a StreamDeck but I only use Windows for gaming and have transitioned away from Mac entirely.

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