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I got a nice backlit, clicky, and reasonably configurable keyboard for about 40 squids. Has a nice solid metal chassis, removable keycaps - even has a keycap removal tool clipped underneath. Does one job and does it well... and has done for about 3 years now.

P.S.

I don't use a thumb for the space bar - whatever finger is nearest.

It's missing more than the number pad. Seems like... (squints)... something like a 75% keyboard to me.

And it's not ISO... If only there were a hot-swappable ANSI/ISO board.

They found space for DEL, but not INS (so that's a hard no from me as a vim user), PRTSCR, SCRLK and BREAK.

Even my ultrabook laptop keyboard has room for INS.

They didn't find space, they made space :-/. This thing is ugly... you have no 10-key, half a nav and a cramped writer that nobody is trained to type on. You can find rainbow colored children's ABC keyboards that have more usable writers (literally).

I assume mechanical keyboards are popular, but if you've ever been forced to use one you'd probably understand that it was the layout of the old keyboards that "old-timers" like (really like) and most certainly NOT the arthritic nature of loud springy keys.

if you've ever been forced to use one you'd probably understand that it was the layout of the old keyboards that "old-timers" like (really like) and most certainly NOT the arthritic nature of loud springy keys.

Ha, pesky kids! Get off my lawn keyboard!

This old timer(*) likes the feel of the keys. Admittedly my keyboard has Cherry MX brown keys which are (nominally) quiet. If you wanted noise an IBM 029 card punch or an IBM golf ball typewriter were the go to devices.

(*) This year is 50 years since I started working with computers professionally.

.... and I'm moving on.....

Logitechs my number one.....

We will have none of that round here Blondie.

Forgive my ignorance but why is unlocked firmware on a keyboard desirable/a selling point? I mean, I’m not complaining but as long as the thing works, who cares what the firmware is? To me, a keyboard is a “plug in and forget” component; it’s not something anyone is going to bother messing with - is it??

Have a thumbs up. I’ve never upgraded the firmware on my old keyboard. I couldn’t even if I wanted too. I’d argue that we’re making life too complicated!

Possibly so you could change it to generate the right keycodes for customisable keycaps placed in whatever position you want. But then again their software should sort that out on the computer too.

But then again System 76 is open source where possible so they're offering it out of principle.

I looked into this a while back as I thought it might be useful to have an "auxiliary" keyboard to generate accented letters for other languages while retaining a familiar keyboard layout for general use.

I kind of assumed that keyboards had moved on a bit, but it seems they still basically just report the "down" status for keys in defined grid positions*. This means that with the aid of keyboard firmware you could swap around the position of keys within a specific keyboard layout - but you can't add symbols that aren't in the keyboard layout selected on the host computer. You'd also have to go to some lengths to change the pairing of (say) shifted and unshifted characters on a single key.

That kind of interaction between the keyboard and the OS keyboard layout maps is going to negate much of the possible benefit, I suspect.

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*Although the USB HID standard defines character codes (rather than the scan codes of previous standards), they're still effectively key position codes: for example it recommends (or did) that German keyboards should generate "Y" when "Z" is pressed because the "Z" key is in the position occupied by the "Y" key on North American keyboards. It makes no helpful reference to accented characters. Though it does permit the user to be notified of whether their laser disc is playing in constant angular velocity or constant linear velocity mode.

The only benefit I can see is that you could write macros which would automatically press keys in order. You can't easily use it to add new symbols since it's still just reporting key states, but if the keys you want to press are already available, it can issue them without you having to do so yourself. That would allow you to establish a bunch of custom keystrokes. This sounded interesting when I first thought of it, but now I'm having trouble trying to figure out why as I've never had an interest in doing that before.

There are already plenty of keyboards that allow you to create and run macros. Usually they're gamer-oriented keyboards with extra keys specifically for them, but that's not required. But as others have noted, it's trivial to do that sort of thing in software, you don't need to be able to edit the firmware.

"Forgive my ignorance"

You're forgiven... a keyboard shouldn't even have firmware.

Why?

Well ...

Just like the ongoing RGB crappiness , to get punters to buy one.

What else?

... stored directly on the keyboard's internal memory ...

Right ...

What could possibly go wrong?

So much nonsense, so little time.

I tell you, we are doomed.

A.

There are a lot of tricks you can program into a QMK keyboard and everybody can program in exactly whatever they want. It becomes more important as you get to smaller and smaller keyboards. I only use 40% keyboards, normally a minivan or equinox so I have to double up a lot of functionality to get what I need out of such a small board.

For example, my shift keys when tapped once do (), tapped twice do [], tapped thrice {}, but on hold work like a normal shift key. Double tapping backspace deletes a whole word, triple tapping deletes the whole line. Layer 2 for backspace turns it into the same but with delete.

I must be getting old. I see RGB and I think “No way” right away. Perhaps the fun has been drained out of my soul.

I’ll be sticking with my faithful old AEK II keyboard, with Alps mechanical switches. 30 years old, and still the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used.

By far the most comfortable keyboard I ever used was the keyboard on IBM Selectric Typewriters. A lot of us thought that back at the dawn of time when the Selectric was the crown jewel of then modern offices (and also the console for the CDC1604/3x00 series). To my knowledge, there has never been PC keyboard that matched the Selectric's touch and feel. Not sure why not.

I was a cheapskate. I had an old EX44, which I also used as a printer. That felt pretty good too.

I just recently bought a Kingston HyperX Alloy Elite 2 for £130 delivered and I'm loving it. No, the RGB doesn't really appeal to me either. I don't want a disco going on whilst I'm typing but it is useful as you can select your own solid backlight colour and brightness. I also programmed a mode where only the WASD keys are lit for when I'm gaming. The USB port is useful as is the volume control but I have no use for the media control keys. Having a NumPad is a must for me.

I would love to be able to disable one key. WTF is the point of the CapsLock key? I'll be mid combat and all of sudden I start moving slowly,..... because I've accidentally hit CapsLock,.... again! Very frustrating. Guess I'll have to remove the key cap the same as on all my other keyboards.

Remap the caps lock key to escape. I originally did this after getting a mac with a terrible pretend esc key, but now I do it for every keyboard. It's a much more useful key to have a large button for.

You could probably just pry the key cap off and drop in a small rubber washer sufficiently thick to prevent the key from depressing fully. I actually did that for someone once. But what if you break the key? Well, you wanted it disabled did you not?

If you're running Linux, then the command set:

xmodmap -e "clear lock"

xmodmap -e "keycode 66 = NoSymbol Caps_Lock"

xmodmap -e "add lock = Caps_Lock"

should change key assignments so that SHIFT+CAPSLOCK is needed to toggle between the capslock state and the unlocked state. Put them in a file called /etc/profile.d/capslock.sh and make it globally readable: most local versions of ~/.bashrc should find it there and and execute it as part of the login process.

Hopefully, Windows and Apple OSen will have a similar user configuration process that can reassign keys on a per-user basis.

On the Mac side of the fence things are inevitably more limited, but you can still turn caps lock into a useful key. Via System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys... you can set your physical caps lock key to act as any of caps lock, escape, control, option or command.

Setting caps lock to act as control is the first thing I do on any new Mac. Also if you're using an old PC keyboard, from the time before Windows keys, using that same dialogue to switch the other modifiers lets you keep the command button where it is intended to be.

They are USA-only and that's a a shame, they are one of the very few vendors who seem to be supplying relaitvely decent GNU/Linux kit. Even if it is for a price.

Have a look at [1]Tuxedo and [2]XMG on this side of the pond.

[1] https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en

[2] https://www.xmg.gg/en/

This thing has too many keys that are superfluous and useless to me - arrow keys, PgUp, PgDn, Home, blah blah blah. I don't even know what all those things are for but they're not in my world. The Ctrl key is in the wrong place, as it is with most keyboards. LED lights are utterly pointless (pro hint: many of us who use mechanical keyboards are not "gamers" we are programmers who don't like flashy lights when we're trying to think). Split space bar idea is weak. Besides remapping keys, what firmware things might I want to modify? Perhaps I could turn it into a 5 rotor Enigma machine? I'd like to have heard more about the keyboard feel since I'm not very familiar with those switches. I'm very happy with the Topres in my HHKB Pro2 thanks anyway. Overall impression: meh; not convinced of the value.

Can't agree with everything you say as I definitely use arrow keys and page up/down. I do however agree with "Crtl key is in the wrong place". As long as you consider "right place" to be where the annoying "Caps" key is on nearly every keyboard out there these days (I know I can re-map). I miss my Sun keyboard layout.

Also US keyboard layout is a mess for me these days due to where the pipe symbol is.