What's your favourite keyboard?

I use cable for everything. Network, pc's, laptop, keyboard. Oh... wireless mouse with batteries, but that's all. The only device on wifi in the house is mobile phone. Headphones are on cable connection via a headphone amp. I removed the bt/wifi adapter from my latest mini pc box.

Lots of hacking https://www.hackers-arise.com/post/bluetooth-hacking-part-1-getting-started-with-bluetooth .

Technical Details — KeySniffer

keysniffer.net keysniffer.net
etc...

And I could never get bt to work on freebsd anyway. Wifi does work, of course.
 
6502 said:
Currently I use Logitech MK295. It is wireless but has "right" layout of keys, relatively silent and LED for Caps Lock.
Click to expand...
Not having a caps lock LED is a major omission on my latest lenovo thinkpad keyboard. Very annoying, it would only have cost a few cents to include it. Don't they use the products they make? On the USB version of the keyboard there is no battery to run down and there is already a hole in the case at the top right corner of the keyboard case moulding where the bluetooth led is present in the bluetooth version. It wouldn't have taken much to put an led in there and a small firmware change to light it up on the usb version. Cheap bastards.

Turns out there is a little program called xkbvleds that can be used to show a virtual LED indicator of the caps lock state on the screen. On my system running the windowmaker window manager, you can make a handy caps lock indicator LED in the bottom right hand corner of the screen by running

$ xkbvleds -watch 1 -geom -0-0

and make sure to dock the appicon and set it to start when wmaker is started and lock it in position in the dock. You will see a small green led in the bottom right hand corner of the screen that switches on when caps lock is on. Make sure to switch off all window decorations in the window attributes of the xkbvleds window and make it omnipresent across all desktops, using the titlebar dropdown menu. If you want to put it somewhere else on the screen you can vary the -geom arguments. Using -geom -1000-0 puts it about 1/3 of the way in from the right side of the screen along the bottom edge, for example (on my screen anyway, the x-coordinate depends on the size of your screen).

The final result should look something like this. If you look carefully at the bottom right corner of the screenshot, observe the green caps lock led indicator is on. It's quite small on my 2K screen but good enough. Unfortunately changing the width and height of the xkbvleds client area using the -geom argument doesn't cause the size of the led indicator to scale with the window. You might prefer to put it somewhere else on the screen than the bottom right corner. It's better than nothing anyway. There are probably gnome applets you can get to show the keylock state as well and swallow them in something like wmsystemtray, I haven't bothered to investigate further since this works well enough, and xkbvleds requires no gnome dependencies to be installed. You might have to zoom the screenshot to see the caps lock indicator LED at the bottom right corner.

2024-07-16-20:38:12_2560x1600.png
 
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lgrant said:
I have a couple of Ducky keyboards with Cherry MX Brown switches (the default), and they feel pretty nice.

I really wish someone would offer a keyboard with just enough keys to have one of each Cherry MX color, to make it easier to decide which color to choose. It wouldn’t even have to be a working keyboard; just a row of switches and key caps. (Having the letter on the key cap match the color, like “R” for Cherry MX Red, would be a nice touch.)
Click to expand...

Cherry made that. I have one somewhere. They are rare.
 
My only Ducky died suddenly. They charged me money just to open a support request and never gave me a RMA number. Kinda of soured my relationship with them. I liked the keyboard all right. Switched to WASD then.

I am also a cable fanatic. Basically only my Macs are on Wifi. Even my Apple TV has an Ethernet port.
 
blackbird9 said:
Not having a caps lock LED is a major omission on my latest lenovo thinkpad keyboard. Very annoying, it would only have cost a few cents to include it. Don't they use the products they make?

Turns out there is a little program called xkbvleds that can be used to show a visual indicator of caps lock state on the screen.
Click to expand...
LED indicators are missing on many wireless keyboards to save battery. NumLock is ON frequently which is significant consumption but in this model Logitech has made good choice to put only Caps Lock.
 
While we're talking about keyboards, I found this website that lets you test your typing speed:- https://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english

I managed to get around 60-70 wpm on the first few attempts with the new lenovo thinkpad keyboard, not particularly fast but good enough. I got around 95% accuracy, again good enough for me.

I noticed someone on there has got 115 wpm in spanish which is pretty good :) .
 
cracauer@ said:
I still miss classic Xorg versions where LED control still worked. I used keyboard LEDs as my "new mail' indicator.
Click to expand...
Also useful if you are like the guy in Neal Stephensen’s Cryptonomicon and need to output secret data but don’t want to display it on the screen because you are afraid of Van Eck Phreaking. (He displayed the data in Morse code on one of the keyboard LEDs.)
 
I spent a good number of decades using the IBM Type M keyboard. It's built like a tank. I have three of them in my basement. One connected to a KVM switch, another connected to the firewall (in case I have any USB problems with the KVM switch) and a spare. We closed down an office 15-20 years ago. Everything was discarded, so I grabbed the three IBM keyboards.

When my personal and $JOB laptops are connected to the KVM switch upstairs in my office I use a Logitech MX Mechanical. It's the closest wireless keyboard I've found that feels remotely like the IBM Type M.
 
Also looking for a solid permanent keyboard. I consume a Logitech K120 per 2 months now, but they messed up the layout within the model, so I want something else.. Also have a DAS with a design fault that makes the space bar detach from it's balancing rod at random. You have to glue it with nail polish remover or something...
 
The Cherry G80-3000 is a cheaper clone of the IBM model M, using cherry mx switches. I've got an old one with a ps/2 connector. Different feel from model M of course, and not as solidly built as what came out of greenock, but still a pretty good keyboard. Having said that, I looked up the price and they're almost as expensive as the unicomp clone now, which is crazy. My G80 is made in the czech republic.

www.cherry.co.uk

G80-3000

The timeless keyboard for outstanding writing performance, fulfilling even the highest demands. Durable, precise and reliable. Tried-and-tested millions of times over. The CHERRY G80-3000 standard ...
www.cherry.co.uk www.cherry.co.uk
 
Speaking of greenock, I was sad to read this last year.
www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk

End of era as IBM leaves Inverclyde after over 70 years

GLOBAL computing firm IBM is closing its last Inverclyde base and bringing an end to its 70 years in Inverclyde.
www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk www.greenocktelegraph.co.uk
More jobs gone.

Of course that office wasn't the factory where they made the model M's, they closed that years ago; I think the factory itself has been demolished now.

Here's what it used to be like. They're making PC, server and thinkpad printed circuit boards in this video. That was a state-of-the-art facility at the time. Where did the idea come from that we can't make this kind of stuff nowadays?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COcKvVfNgGo

You can see model-M's (also made in greenock) in use in a number of places in the video, as below. I wish I had one of the magnifying viewers she is using! Expensive piece of kit I think, it would be interesting to know who made those, it looks the business.

2024-07-20-09:20:39_2560x1600.png
2024-07-20-10:31:07_2560x1600.png
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Ater a bit more browsing I found a video of actual keyboard production at IBM Greenock. This is how the famous model M keyboard was made. IBM called it computer integrated manufacturing - CIM. It's pretty cool when you think that this was the early 80's. :)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEN6Rry4ekk

It uses ibm's own robotic manufacturing system, the 7535: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/artificial-intelligence-robotics/13/292/1303 and 7565, programmed in a high level language called AML.
 
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