I wish a person could order one of these without the numeric keypad. I deeply hate being off-center to the screen when typing on these larger portables.
I'm not a fan of symmetry for symmetry's sake, but I do think some affordances for the human body might be a good idea. How do southpaws enjoy this keyboard setup?
The ergonomics of laptops are bad enough without stuff like this.
You and many others probably know this, but figure it's helpful context for others who might stumble through this thread: it's not necessarily all on System76 as to why that shell is used, since the shells themselves are (IIRC) rebranded Clevo shells still.
i.e I would suspect they're making use of what they can reasonably acquire to sell.
(The offset aspect would drive me mad as well)
https://www.dummies.com/computers/pcs/the-hidden-numeric-key...
Yes, that is the first thing I notice. Any laptop with an off-center trackpad goes in the do-not-buy list.
Seriously, anyone using a laptop full time for work (who cares about ergo) should invest in an external keyboard and monitor.
FWIW, I’ve been using a 15” MBP as my primary dev/work machine for over a decade and I’ve just become used to it. Tried external monitor, keyboard a few times, but it just doesn’t work for me anymore. I mostly run in high res mode, as opposed to the scaled default mode and it works well. This is also why the 13” laptops are not an option for me, am eagerly waiting for the 16” MBP fingers crossed.
Gaming? 78462 make for the best movement, and the number pad also has seven non-numerical buttons to bind things to. It also puts your index finger right next to lENTER, which is so useful for games that make use of it.
Programming? Bind the buttons to commonly-used UNIX programs to make for a better IDE than an IDE.
Calculating? So nice to have an ergonomic numerical input.
I understand that many people need it and many others don't. I wish manufacturers had an option for keyboards without the number pad. I'd pay an extra for it.
Mind sharing some examples of your bindings?
If this sounds like a convoluted REPL with fancier in-line documentation, you're kind of right. It's basically just interactive and automated literate programming, though.
The rest of my bindings range from pretty simple (running an open project's tests, displaying results from the last 10 commits, etc.) to significantly more complex. I have a few different xkb layouts depending on what I'm doing, and a few different languages get dedicated ones, but for the ones I most-commonly use, they all share one.
Not really. There was a time where laptops, especially 15", had front speakers. If the choice is that or numpad, I pick front speakers. Its a bummer smartphones don't have them anymore these days. More keys might seem like a no-brainer, but its always also less is more and keys you don't use are useless keys. As power user, it seems (re)binding of keys is in order anyway.
1080p and numpad is a downgrade from my MBP 2015. It also doesn't specify much about the AMD graphics card. I'd rather get a modular laptop instead, but with 1440p minimum.
The thing with a trackpad centered to left (let alone its gonna be as good as a Magic Trackpad 2 by Apple from 2015 and onward), is that if you use your right hand your arm can get hurt if you let it rest. And, you should let your arms rest. Also, the arm is in the way. Apple had a neat solution to it: large(r) trackpad (though I prefer the previous one, centered).
But I was never in the market for this because if I order something like this from USA I get to pay a large amount of taxes on top of it cause the price never includes tax. Let me know if its available in Europe and I'll have a look, but the above remain serious concerns so I doubt it.
Phone speakers have come a long way since samsung was putting them on the back of the phones..
I think the Framework laptop is our best shot at it though.
As for customizing a keyboard with minimal effort... it's actually easier to do that with MacOS and Windows than it is in linux, in my experience. Sure, you can do basic key remapping really easily in linux with xmodmap but if you want to do anything complicated with the built in keyboard, MacOS has Karabiner Elements which is far better than any of the built in or custom keyboard software like xcape or xkeysnail. Similarly on Windows, AutoHotKey is much easier to do complex customizations as well. I haven't really tried Kmonad but that is cross-platform so it wouldn't really be considered an advantage to linux.
What terrifying place is that? (I'm just poking fun, but seriously: where?)
Some hobbyist shops may offer assembly services. If you don't want to solder, ZSA labs have a "moonlander" keyboard that looks quite nice, for a premium price.
If you're not put off by soldering, then some popular split keyboards would be the Corne (also known as "crkbd"), Kyria, lily58, Sofle.
There are also designs which are closer to a normal keyboard, like the ultimate hacking keyboard. (But, personally, I don't understand why you'd spend so much money on a keyboard and have it be asymmetric).
I think there's a sort of hobbyist renaissance going on right now, though. Plenty of new keyboards are being designed and built because it's more accessible than ever to design your own pcb or if not that to get someone else's design printed, which along with the general mechanical keyboard enthusiast market, has given people a wealth of options to choose from.
Discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26179311
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/preference...
Why skip 5 to use 2 instead? And you also have extra keys around WASD to bind to. What makes numpad keys any different? For lefties who use mouse with left hand you can have same keys on the right hand side but hat varies (for me equal keys would be plöä)
>programming
Are all of your function keys already populated? And if you are going to move your hand to numpad why skip over insert, home, page up/down, and end?
>calculating
Well there you have me. 20 years ago when I was manually inserting PSU serial numbers into excel numpad was real nice, but I can't remember last time I had to input numbers like that.
My current keyboard has numpad, but only thing I've used it in years was as abort button for some bots.
Walking backwards usually is slower in video games, so you can bind 5 to something you use more commonly. 7 is autorun. 5 makes a great button to set for fishing or your most-critical spell.
> And you also have extra keys around WASD to bind to. What makes numpad keys any different? For lefties who use mouse with left hand you can have same keys on the right hand side but hat varies (for me equal keys would be plöä)
The left side of the keyboard has more buttons, and you use those for complex combinations in video games, which leaves the number pad in a unique spot of being a "quick access" bar.
> Are all of your function keys already populated? And if you are going to move your hand to numpad why skip over insert, home, page up/down, and end?
On a good laptop keyboard, insert, home, end, pgup and pgdn are all directly above the number pad. This gives you extra buttons that are just a little out-of-the-way, but it doesn't make it so you have to reach your hands over them to reach the number pad. On the best laptop keyboard I've ever used, literally every button was just in a grid, with a few smaller (but still grid-fitting) buttons mixed in, like the arrow keys and function keys.
But yes, my function keys are already populated.
> Well there you have me. 20 years ago when I was manually inserting PSU serial numbers into excel numpad was real nice, but I can't remember last time I had to input numbers like that.
Anecdotally, I use calculators of various sorts as a way of verification while programming; a lot of the problems I find myself drawn to are close to abstracted math (as are most things when you aren't a web programmer), and it's really useful to be able to jot down an equation and verify you've handled the problem right before you commit to it.
> My current keyboard has numpad, but only thing I've used it in years was as abort button for some bots.
You should bind the buttons to be useful to you! It's very nice once you've done so.
The usual story is that is is about pitchers, but the timeline is wrong. The first official baseball game is cited as in 1846, with "southpaw" occurring in 1848 already referring to boxing.
Personally in the never use it camp, and hate these offset laptops. Sometimes its because people do a lot of number data entry spreadsheet style, I can understand that case a little more, however even people that mostly type text I've seen for example will like to enter IP addresses on the number pad for no obvious reason. God speed IPv6 adoption :)
On the other hand laptops are terrible for ergonomics and daily usage anyway, it's unfortunately we've moved so far into laptops from desktops and it doesn't seem so common to dock them and use an external keyboard.. to my feeling mostly because the screen ends up being too small once you push it back to use an external keyboard so then you need an external monitor and the cost and complexity goes up.
I also did practice my musscle memory for the numpad in a similar way to touch as part of typing scientific data (back in the 90s). After a couple of weeks of that, my speed on the numpad would be at least twice as high as when typing numbers on the main keyboard. Also, accuracy was high enough that I could reliably trust the output even when not looking at the result (very close to 100%), which is critical for many use cases that involve numbers.
Even if I spend 99% of my time on the regular keyboard now, if I have to spend more than 5mins typing only numbers, I will feel really frustrated without a numpad.
Then again, I tend to use the laptop keyboards quite little anyway, mostly only while travelling or when in a meeting room. In the office, there is a dock and at home I use a desktop.
Especially considering that nowadays "docking" is pluggin in an USB-C cable from a monitor that: - is used as a large external display - powers and recharges the laptop - acts as an USB hub, with external keyboard, mouse and webcam.
If I want I can go outside to have a meeting and when I want to code, I go back to my home office. And when I commute to the work office, I can work on the train. And when I get there, I plug it in the same setup as home. Next step would be having all of this wireless but it's already near perfect IME.
I just described my setup actually :)
It does matter. The arrow key cluster and numpad take a lot of space, which means the left side of the keyboard (where asdf / your left hand are) and your mouse have to be very far from each other. This leads to either putting the keyboard's letter key section in the center, making your mouse be uncomfortably far to the right, or having your mouse in a natural position for your right hand, leaving your left hand way out to the left. Over time this can (and did, to me) cause posture / muscle balance issues.
Currently I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt Wireless keyboard. https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/accessories/products/keyboar.... The main keyboard with letters and two extra columns just to the right of the letters (with no gap) means everything can be positioned perfectly. The wireless numpad is there for when you need to use it. It's a very overpriced product at $100 but works wonderfully.
Also, in college I had a tiny desk with a cabinet underneath its left side, so my chair was offset to 60/40% of the way to the right. With a full size desktop keyboard with numpad, there literally wasn't enough space for my mouse, unless I moved the keyboard very far to the left. Thus causing the issues I mentioned above. That's what got me into tiny mechanical keyboards :) I'll admit it's a somewhat niche case, but there are probably still many millions of people in the world with a similar desk setup to that for whom a full size desktop keyboard is an unhealthy option.
I built a numpad once but found I'm so used to not having one, even positioned on the left, it wasn't much use.
[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
EDIT: Except the secondary screen is above the keyboard: https://www.asus.com/Laptops/For-Home/ZenBook/ZenBook-Duo-14...
I'm in this minority! Why don't people use the top-row numbers!?!?
So much so that I often use AHK to remap the top number row to be other functions.
I find the 10-key to be more accurate and faster for me. My muscle memory is numbers are entered with my right hand...
So of course, the advertisement for every laptop emphasises internal component metrics that don't actually matter that much. "Now with X8-7820Z SUPER!" or whatever.
Instead they have terrible screens, tinny speakers, noisy microphones, and non-customisable keyboard layouts. The latter of which are always cramped, and I mean always, even on 17" laptops.
Do you have any idea how cheap it would be for these manufacturers to allow you to choose your keyboard layout? It's a removable tray already! They can be swapped out in seconds! There are multiple keyboard layouts available from the parts manufacturers!
Can you order such a thing? No.
(I'm in no way affiliated, just eyeing them up for my next laptop purchase)
I suspect the utility of a numpad is increased while the off center problems are decreased for touchtypers which is why there is such a divide.
Ah? I would have thought the opposite. I cannot touch-type at all (and you could promise me a million dollars reward, I still wouldn't manage), nevertheless there is one part of the keyboard I can use without looking, and it is the numpad. Possibly because it is a limited area with a limited number of keys, and the numbers are placed in a "logical" order (compared to letters on the main part of a keyboard).
I am bad at entering numbers on the top row, a I am forced to do on most laptops (and unfortunately, I personally find the pseudo-numpad, which requires using the Fn key or similar, utterly unusable; I never could get used to it).
I did buy a wireless numeric keypad at one time that had some extra keys and arrows that made data entry really fast.
The "5" key on most numpads has a bump so I can reach it without even looking at a keyboard I'm familiar with. Any 4-digit security pin I use is entered from numpads.
I always buy a laptop with a numpad. Its my preferred method of typing numbers. There are also a whole slew of video game applications, as well as Blender movement (camera angles, camera movement, etc. etc.) that's highly intuitively mapped to the numpad.
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I should note that when I was practicing for the video-game community "Blazblue", all movements were discussed in terms of numpad. 236 is quarter-circle forward. 69874123 is "360-degree circle, counterclockwise, starting with right".
Needless to say, typing a combo such as 5b 5c 2d 28d 28 b c b 8 b c 236c 2d was much easier with a numpad.
Anyone who wants to "decode" the button pushes only needs to look at their numpad to see how their left-hand should move, with "b, c, d" being the keywords for the right-hand buttons in Blazblue. Street Fighter players use lp, mp, hp (light punch, medium punch, heavy punch) instead. So those bits get game specific, but the numpad approach to discussion is basically considered superior.
The bump on the j-key on the keyboard, and the 5-key on the numpad is very much clear to high-speed typing.
On keyboards without bumps, I find myself off-aligned. Instead of typing "jumping jellyfish", I type "hynoubg hekktfusg", and have to realign my hands.
Could I do it without the bump? Probably. But having the bump there (both the j-bump and the 5 bump) is very useful at preventing this mistake.
Example with image: https://andrew.kvalhe.im/2021-03-19
With this method you can customize the location and surrounding mathematical operators.
It's an impoverished numpad that requires different muscle memory that you probably don't use often enough to master.
Personally I never use the virtual numpad on my devices, I use the full numpad if available or I usr the top row of number keys.
I guess now I could look at the X1 extreme, because that has a 15"/16" display and no numpad.
Only the external standard layout will really do for look-free pressing of all the useful keys.
So I stopped expecting anything beyond a couple minutes out of laptop keyboards and always carry a standard-enough 104-key.
I first began this practice when I had a laptop with a few missing keys, but soon I realized how much better an external keyboard is, and how little extra weight it adds to my bag.
What I don't understand, if they're going to include a numeric keypad on the right, is why they didn't make the bottom of the numeric keypad the arrow keys. Looking at [1], 2 should be Up, 0 should be Down, Right should be Left, . should be Right. So Num Lock should be Insert, 7 should be Delete, / should be Home, 8 should be End, * should be PageUp, 9 should be PageDown.
I'd imagine that most techies use the arrow keys and Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys a lot more than the numeric keys, why not make that the primary layout, and be numeric keys only when Num Lock is on?
Am I crazy? Or does nobody give keyboards one ounce of thought ever?
[1] https://images.prismic.io/system76/0dccf217-22af-4e7e-adc9-e...
Besides, this is a laptop running Linux, what do you think is the more likely target audience? People entering numbers in a spreadsheet, or people doing software development?
Most of the comments here are people complaining that the numeric keypad is there at all.
I hate to break it to you, but they can't be both simultaneously. They only "double" if you have a mind-reading genie hovering above your shoulder and pressing NumLock for you whenever you need to switch from arrow-mode to number-mode and vice versa. I don't have one of those; do you?
> Besides, this is a laptop running Linux, what do you think is the more likely target audience? People entering numbers in a spreadsheet, or people doing software development?
A) This Clevo-clone keyboard is exactly the same as on Clevo-clone Windows boxes. Windows spreadsheet users outnumber Linux software developers substantially, so that's who the market produces hardware for.
A) Personally, I kind of do both; I often (well OK... But not exactly rarely) use a spreadsheet full of numbers to generate code.
C) One gets the feeling that the main driver behind this particular comment was contempt for the ordinary spreadsheet-using "sheeple". At least, condescension seems to come naturally to you, Mr. I-hate-to-break-it-to-you.
> Most of the comments here are people complaining that the numeric keypad is there at all.
Sure. And they are (quite rightfully) clamouring for keyboards without one... But what does that have to do with this? Not wanting a numpad at all is a very different (and far less misguided) idea than severely crippling the usability of both the separate arrow keys and numpad on keyboards that have one, which is what your suggestion boils down to.
But I totally agree that the people putting keyboards together don't seem to actually spend much thought and definitely don't user test it with representative users, including keyboard-centric users like coders.
On a side note, I love the CM Storm Quick Fire TK keyboard I have with brown switches. It has no arrow/home vertical area, instead when you turn the numpad off the keys act like that slice. I wish more keyboards were like it. Not sure why they aren't.
You used to be able to pop the trackball out from the right side of the keyboard area, slide the keys to the right, and then re-insert the trackball into the left side.
Do the same with a num pad, instead of a trackball. And for people who don't want the num pad, make available half-width blank inserts to occupy the space on both sides.
Definitely an acquired taste and not the most portable of devices.
But it is really hard to find notebook without numpad these days. Especially hard if it needs to work with linux out of the box.
This is really unfortunate unless they are going hard for the "Accountant" demographic.
* FWIW: Typing this on a System 76 machine with a [1] TKL mechanical keyboard.
[1] TKL / Tenkeyless - https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/tenke...
I suspect the divide here is between people that are touch typists w/ experience in numeric data entry and people who still need to look at the physical keyboard to type.
As a touch typist I've never particularly cared where the keyboard is, and while I haven't used a numeric keypad in years, I still miss having one.