I started using mechanical keyboards made for gaming, and I've never been happier with a piece of hardware in my life. It's like typing on butter instead of jamming your fingers into concrete. From what I remember, really old keyboards were all mechanical; sometimes older really is higher quality.

The IBM keyboards used for the PC, AT, and PS/2 used a "buckling spring" mechanism that is not mechanical, as later models use a membrane.

I am typing this on a Model M that is dated "22JJUL88" - I do all of my important typing on these keyboards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard

I’m fairly certain that Model F and M keyboards are considered mechanical.

It’s not a precise category. But I’d even go so far as to say they are the type specimens for mechanical keyboards.

Yes, most products in the category use Cherry-type switches, but Topres are definitely considered mechanicals and they combine a rubber dome and a spring.

Literally all keyboards are mechanical, what’s the alternative? Organic?

The term is used figuratively, not literally.

Buckling spring keyboards count, rubber-dome and scissors don't. There's no overarching principle here, if there is, it's how they feel under your fingers.

Optical or touch.

Te only thing that prevents me from switching to a mechanical keyboard is I care about my coworkers ability to concentrate.

Cherry MX Browns are reasonably quiet. My local Micro Center has a tester keyboard with a variety of switches that you can try. If you look outside the limited options there, you can find huge selections of mechanical switches that are only slightly louder than membranes. You’re looking for linear or tactile switches and you can find a pretty complete list at https://deskthority.net/wiki/Main_Page in the “Keyboard Switches” section. You can even mod louder switches with O-rings to dampen the noise.

I agree, MX Brown are silent enough to not get notice.

I guess it's a positive side effect of open spaces: there is so much noise around from phone calls and co-workers discussing that it doesn't make any difference.

More seriously, I've a Ducky keyboard with MX Browns (and it's also a weird one with MX Blues (the noisier ones) for the arrows and page UP/DOWN), and I never got any remark for that.

The only story I've heard from colleagues complaining about keystroke noises was for a friend that has a really heavy typing (to the point of cracking the key caps), and even in this case, rubber O-rings did the trick to dampened the noise enough.

Then get some medium stiffness linear switches. Near silent unless you bottom out, and the added stiffness helps with that.

> sometimes older really is higher quality

You can apply this successfully to espresso machines, coffee grinders, furniture and many tools (gardening, woodworking etc). The difficult part is finding them as often you need them immediately.

For me it's stereo receivers/turntables and cast iron pans. Vintage Le Creusets look incredible and they feel so good to handle.

> proper keys

Yes, please give me a full keyboard, and don't put things in weird places. My current machine has "Fn" where "CTRL" should be and it's driving me crazy. Also, the "PgUp" and "PgDown" are directly above left and right keys and I inevitably hit them when I'm jamming the keyboard with my meathooks. I don't need a number pad, but if you're going to give me nonstandard buttons, put em somewhere I can't hit em while I'm trying to do actual work.

In many laptops with Fn and Ctrl swapped there is often a setting in the BIOS to switch their positions. I know Thinkpads have this ability, and I feel pretty certain other brands can do this as well.

Not this Asus I have. I'm ready to cut some traces and solder jumper wires to rearrange this POS.

You can remap any keypress that reaches Windows by editing the registry, as described here: https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/2155/Keyboard-Rema... (2011, but works with Windows 10)

Unfortunately many "Fn" keys are handled purely in hardware and Windows can't see them. But it might be worth a look, if you haven't already tried it.

AutoHotKey is also useful, especially if you want more complex hotkeys.

And xmodmap is the de-facto solution for X11-based Unix machines. Rebind your keys in an ~/.xmodmaprc that is run at startx by your ~/.xinitrc.

One of my old laptops had the function keys swapped (so you had to hold down Fn to hit the F key) and had mapped Sleep to F5, which I’m used to using to both start debugging and reload a web page.

The amount of times I put my laptop to sleep by accident was infuriating, and it was a work laptop so I couldn’t get into the bios to swap the keys back!

> My current machine has "Fn" where "CTRL" should be

You mean directly to the left of the A?

I.. uh... no? Why, why would you think that?

Because that's where CTRL should be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_key#Location_of_the_ke...

Well, my laptop isn't a Teletype.

I miss laptop mice that had actual buttons and didn't get in the way when typing. Laptop ergonomics are terrible these days.

My laptop at home is a Dell Latitude E6450 (I think that's the one); it's the last one where they had a real keyboard and not that stupid island shit, and it also has a trackpoint and a normal trackpad with actual buttons. After that generation, they finally jumped on the stupid mushy island key bandwagon, so I don't know how to upgrade from this machine. I had one of the newer Latitudes at my last job and it was nearly unusable because of that shitty keyboard. Honestly, WTF is wrong with everyone these days?

Luckily, this laptop can play x265 1080p video just fine and has 16GB of memory, but 4k is a no-go.

Best laptop keyboard I ever used was on a Compaq SLT/386 I owned. Keyboard could be detached from the laptop (ok, today it would be considered a "luggable", but back then, it was a nice machine), and it had a coiled cord that plugged into the computer underneath where the keyboard sat.

You could unplug it from the computer (it was a mini-din PS/2 style plug). The keyboard itself wasn't mechanical (not a buckling spring or similar system), but it did have full-travel keys and a nice feel for typing on.

I got mine used and had to build a custom battery pack from old cell phone batteries, which made me have to remove 2 meg of RAM (to fit the larger custom battery pack), leaving me with 6 meg instead of 8. I had Caldera OpenDOS installed on it:

http://www.deltasoft.com/opendos.htm

http://esca.atomki.hu/paradise/dos/opendos-en.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS

...with Monkey Linux installed on top of that (Monkey is a distro that used DOS for the underlying file system - you could even share data easily):

http://projectdevolve.tripod.com/ (downloads don't work)

http://www.ipt.ntnu.no/~knutb/linux486/download/monkey/monke...

I'm honestly not sure where or if you can still get a copy of that distro - I should look into it; maybe I should host my copy somewhere...

I can't speak to laptop keyboards that far back in time, but for a very long time, Thinkpads and Dell Latitudes had the best keyboards for laptops (obviously they weren't going to compare to a Model M or other mechanical keyboard).

But even these have gone away, to be replaced by the shitty island keys.

I use a Lenovo T480 for work and disabled the trackpad so I just use the nipple + hardware buttons when I'm not using a mouse. When I need a new personal laptop I'll probably buy the same model.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser...

give me a nipple any day.

I can use a macbook trackpad, it's OK for consuming, but the pc manufacturers saw macs, and copied them. Poorly.