February 2024, regarding a tragedy that began in 2023: Microsoft keyboards back from the dead.
After massive daily injections of healing Paxlovid, the Sculpt keyboard has risen! Amazon now stocks the Incase “Designed by Microsoft” keyboards.
Get yours before the 6,000 percent tariffs kick back in (the case is stamped “Made in China”, almost surely by the same factory that Microsoft used).
The new supplier’s site:
That’s swell. I had to get a replacement for my old white version on eBay.
Let us know if they’re as good as what we had 40 years ago or as horrendous as amazon basic keyboards. Still waiting for incase to make a model M.
The IBM Selectric keyboard was better, if memory serves. The original Lisp Machine keyboard was better, but that cost $900 in pre-pre-pre-Biden dollars! (About $3700 today, adjusted for official CPI since January 1980) According to https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/06/business/ibm-cuts-prices-on-selectric-111.html a Selectric typewriter was also in the $900 range in 1980.
Get your model M from Unicomp. Expensive, but so nice.
I’ve tried to link to Unicomp, but it keeps getting blocked.
A more recent option is that the even older and more tactile “Model F” capacitive buckling spring OR beam spring technology has been reverse-engineered and resurrected. There is an article about it on “Ars Technica” and the company is Model F Keyboards dot Com without the spaces.
Unicomp is great, I am sure, but my hands are now accustomed to the Microsoft ergonomic split.
I really liked MS Sculpt when I was in the States, but in the EU I couldn’t get it. So I had to get Logitech K860:
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/shop/p/k860-split-ergonomic.920-009166
It’s not that bad compared to the Sculpt (maybe even wants to fill the Sculpt’s market). I had to get it in the stupid international layout because only the Netherlands had the American one.
One thing that I had observed was that the US layout is better for programming compared to the EU / international one, because one needs to press fewer keystrokes for getting oft-used symbols for programming, like the ‘=’ symbol, or because certain keys are larger in some layouts like the shift key is smaller in the international layout compared to the American one.
A bit off topic, but worth mentioning.
I have worked with developers who are very inefficient with their keyboard usage. There is an overdependency on the mouse and menu navigation. Thus, one hand is often being off the keyboard. While they know how to type, they struggle with learning basic keyboard shortcuts, such as switching between applications or navigating within an IDE or text editor.
The situation is even worse on laptops, which is the case for everyone, without external keyboards or mice. The dependence on the touchpad significantly reduces productivity.
Unfortunately, some of these individuals are considered senior developers on my team based in India.
My keyboard of choose, is any keyboard that has mechanical feedback and palm rest area built-in. I currently on: https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-G613-Lightspeed-Mechanical-Multihost-Connectivity/dp/B07796MBJ7?th=1
Thanks to an IRC channel populated by 15 to 20 year olds circa 1997, these will forever be known to me as the Microsoft Homosexual Natural Keyboard.