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> On desktops it mostly doesn't matter because you can shift the keyboard over relative to the screen.

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 really don't see how it is "too wide for good ergonomics" as you imply if a keyboard has a number pad. I think you exaggerate the amount of difference it makes to try to make a point based on your anecdotal experience which was also based on a poor desk design rather than the KB/mouse layout alone.

You are totally right. I forgot about this. I went from the sculpt wireless to the sculpt ergonomic and the non detachable keypad was really annoying for that exact reason.

> 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..

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 :)

I love the numpad but not as much as the space it takes.

I think a lot of people just haven't learned to touch-type the top number row. It was required for me to graduate to the 6th grade in 2002 to get at least 35 WPM / 90% accuracy on the typing test, and there were a bunch of numbers in there so using the type row naturally was an important part of this. I suspect people who have had similar experiences would never use the numpad. The context switch alone causes huge amounts of downtime.

For me it's the other way. I have no issues embedding nubers in the touch typing when typing normal text, but if there are only numbers, accuracy will go down, unless I bring my center down to the asdf line, which slows me down a lot.

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.