Hacker News Reader

What exactly counts as a good keyboard? I've never had any trouble with my XPS, and don't really see how one could mess up a laptop's keyboard (then again, I haven't had that many laptops). Although some of the cheaper laptop's keyboards seem clunky.

View on HN

> and don't really see how one could mess up a laptop's keyboard

"What's with this ~` key? Nobody uses that, and it offends my designer sensibilities."

I had a Dell like that, and got used to typing $HOME and $(command) rather than ~ and `command`.

Fair enough. When I'm looking for a keyboard, I always try to make sure that at least the keys are all in the right place and are of the right size. (For example, I should not be able to accidentally hit '\' because some hippo thought the return key was too big.)

I have a Dell XPS from 2008 (now a tertiary machine) and some of its keys will get momentarily get "stuck" under the laptop chassis when returning from the compressed position.

My parents have a Toshiba laptop from around 2011, and its keyboard is undescribably atrocious. Poor key layout (small keys & excessive space between keys), overly resistant and springy key dynamics, very slippery key surface, etc.

The best laptop keyboard I've had was the late 90's ~ early 2000's IBM-era thinkpads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com