Hacker News Reader

I question why the butterfly keyboard wouldn't be needed once screens were larger. I use a MNT Reform and a mechanical keyboard is still vastly superior.

View on HN

You may be thinking of butterfly keyboard switches, which aren't what is being discussed here. The Thinkpad "butterfly keyboard" was a design which moved pieces of the keyboard around to make a keyboard wider than the laptop pop out when the laptop was opened. This video has a demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVrpRgKS2x4

The purpose of this design was to allow a small laptop, with a small screen, to have a near full-size keyboard. Once larger screens forced laptops to become larger as well, this design was no longer needed.

Ah yes! My mistake. I didn't realise that was what that was called. I did have one of those for a little while as a lab computer as it beat the size requirements allowed into the lab. I mean it was old for it's time when I used it but plugged in, it would do text files and csv.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com