What's your favourite keyboard?

[ChubaDuba]

ThinkPad seven-row classic keyboard.

 

[T-Aoki]

Not to hijack the thread, but does anyone else miss rollerball mice? Seems like optical ones are so low quality and need replaced so much more freqnetly. I got sick of optical mouse jitter and failures so I resurrected a couple old removeable ball mice I had in the basement. Keep the ball and rollers clean and they still work best, even after 20+ years of use.

Maintaining rollerball mice is a nightmare, as frequent needs to cleaning balls and rollers made several persons lost his/her balls or its covers per week or so and at the moment the repairment parts were not seen on the market, thus, need to purchase and stock new ones constantly, with proper inventry controlls. Sigh.

With trackballs, the needs for maintainance is quite less frequent, thus, nearly no problem. And their balls are usually larger than ones in mice.

 

[T-Aoki]

Thank you, Maturin! Bluetooth is being put away in a drawer under lock and key for now. I read a similar thread, but about a Bluetooth keyboard. The way it's described there - I have no desire to fight.
Heavy Metal is just for old farts like me. It's going down well today too.

My primary choice for wireless keyboards and mice is non-Bluetooth radio.
They "usually" mimic wired USB keyboards/mice well, unlike Bluetooth ones.
The cases they don't work well are, in my limited experiences, even USB keyboards/mice does not work but PS/2 ones.

 

[Maturin]

but PS/2 ones.

Yeah. To me PS/2 is THE keyboard interface, and should stay.
But it's useless to debate about it. Love it or hate it, we have to face the reality: PS/2 is history.

I still got a motherboard with a PS/2 port (MSI MEG); wasn't easy; limits your choices pretty much; every MB comes with Bluetooth and WLAN by series, while I still don't understand - I refuse to understand - why a stationary machine - "Desktop"/"Tower" - comes with WLAN by series anyway.
However, Unicomp also still sells PS/2-KBs.
I'm almost used to USB keyboards. I have to. Even if I still have this feeling in certain situations you'd be better served with a PS/2...
Doesn't matter. If I've seen right, PS/2 will also be removed soon from future FreeBSD, anyway.
So, goodbye good old PS/2. You served us well those many years. Some of us will miss you.

My conspiracy theory of USB is, it was ment to expand the market for useless toy-crap to be attached to computers by morons, like fans, lamps, coffee mug warmers, or rocket launchers (no joke! ddg it!)
The official idea of USB was to get rid of those confusing vast amount of specialized, incompatible connectors:
2x PS/2 for keyboard and mouse, DVI or VGA for monitor, centronics parallel port for printer, optional by card: an own joystick port, and RS232 for maybe anything else - a madness!
Now there is one connector for everything (besides monitors, LAN, and audio): USB.
Now everything is so easy, simple, clear, and completely free of any confusion:
There are connector types A, B, C, mini-B, micro-B for USB-2, micro-B for USB-3, for either USB 1.0, which practically does not exist anymore, or for some or only one of 2.0, 3.1 Gen 1, which was 3.0, now is 3.2 Gen 1, not to be confused whith 3.2 Gen 2, which was 3.1, then 3.1 Gen 2, which is also not to be confused with 3.2 Gen 2x2. Some are interconnectable, others not.
Besides I always need to turn a USB-A connector two times until I get plugged it in, you should have seen me trying the first time to plug in a USB-A-3.2 Gen 2 stick into a USB-A-3.0 plug... Now even form, size and color are not enough anymore to tell one connector from another, you need to look with magnifying glasses into it!
Crystal! No comparison to the confusing connector and cable chaos we had in the earlier days!
Upcoming is 4.0. I'll bet this brings at least four new connectors, which are not compatible with any former one, 3.2 Gen 2x2 becomes 4.1 Gen 1, when 4.0 Gen 2 comes and becomes 4.1 Gen 2. Anyway I wouldn't be surprised if it will provide 16A@230V AC. Now everything can be used in USB: vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, or charge your EV from your laptop...
However, one bet I will win for sure:
will bring an exclusive connector of their own that fits absolutely nothing, not even their own former models.

 

[T-Aoki]

On some oldish but still somehow working computers, some BIOS'es (before UEFI!) are broken that USB keyboards/mice are "stated to be" supported but doesn't work well on BIOS config screens and/or on some OS'es, including Safe Modes on (old) Windoze. In these cases, if we don't have any PS/2 keyboards/mice on hand, troubles could not be resolved.

 

[Crivens]

Maintaining rollerball mice is a nightmare, as frequent needs to cleaning balls and rollers made several persons lost his/her balls ...

I didn't realize mechanical nice were that dangerous. (That was just too good to ignore, sorry)

 

[GlitchyDot]

This is the other essential tool you need to keep your keyboard spotless. This DC34 is about 15 years old and still on the original NiMH battery. Unfortunately they appear to have stopped making them according to this

https://www.dyson.co.uk/support/vacuum-cleaners/handhelds/dc34

but amazon still list them for sale at the moment, in the UK anyway. I'm sure there are other similar makes.

View attachment 19608

This is one of the most awesome keyboards i had, broke down .. want wifi one but damn its expensive in europe and i dont have ebay lol.

 

[blackbird9]

If you mean the thinkpad style standalone keyboard I posted the photo of... I got a couple of them from aliexpress. There was a guy in HK selling various different ones with various language layouts. Just search for 'lenovo keyboard', they might still have some, they were a fraction of the list price. I'm pretty sure it's genuine.. it came in the standard lenovo box, all shrink wrapped, had the typical printed sheets inside and labels on the back.

The problem with the wifi ones is the internal battery appears to die after 2-3 years and because it's glued together you can't replace it. The cable usb one has a problem too, I had to glue the cable in with hot glue and eventually epoxy to stop it wiggling around in the socket, it's really a design fault. It's nice to type on though!

Unfortunately the keycap lettering is very cheap, it's already worn off some of the keys on mine. This is after only 9 months! The 'A' has already disappeared and some of the others are fading fast. They've definitely cut some corners with the build quality. It still types fine of course. In contrast the real thinkpad keyboard on my X201 is over 10 years old and none of the key legends are even partially worn off, and it's had a lot of use in those 10 years.

At the low price I paid on aliexpress I'm not really bothered, but if I had paid full list price I think I would be feeling a bit unimpressed.

 

[drsnx60]

I still have a few Sun type 6 Keyboards , use every day , they dont seem to break .
But have replaced the trackball mouse with a standard scrollbar mouse that falls apart every two years.

 

[blackbird9]

I remember the sun 2 and 3 workstation keyboards with the optical mouse with the metal mouse pad thing with the grid of lines printed on it. Those keyboards weren't bad but the PC model F and the model M that came with the PC-AT was far superior. Shame the same couldn't be said about the operating system!

 

[drsnx60]

So Im using SUN type 6 and type 7 USB keyboards with FreeBSD X86-64 computers with no issues.
Type 6 was shipped abut 25 years ago and type 7 was shipped with SUNs last generations of SPARC and AMD workstations.
type 2 & 3 must have been back during 1980:ies.

 

[blackbird9]

This is my X201 keyboard, no letter fade at all, yet they are still screen printed, those are not 2-shot moulded keys. That keyboard has had a lot of use over more than 10 years as well. The new one isn't built to the same standard, they have cut costs I think. I don't like the glued together assembly on the new one either, you can't open the case without breaking it apart.

 

[blackbird9]

So Im using SUN type 6 and type 7 USB keyboards with FreeBSD X86-64 computers with no issues.
Type 6 was shipped abut 25 years ago and type 7 was shipped with SUNs last generations of SPARC and AMD workstations.
type 2 & 3 must have been back during 1980:ies.

Yeah that's pretty good life out of them. I had a sun 3 around 1988? I think ... with the huge color monitor, we had a lab of sun 2's that had the monochrome monitor, and a few lucky people got the '3's. The big color monitor was realy amazing at the time. I can't remember the size now... it was probably only a 17" or something like that, although I seem to remember it being larger! It was the first workstation I had with a color monitor. That was before sparc... I think they were 68030... its lost in the mists of time haha..

 

[dnb]

First, I would like to note that in 2025 there are still FreeBSD-unfriendly keyboards. For example, the Keychron Q2 keyboard. I think the developers of these great keyboards should test them carefully on FreeBSD first, as there are a large number of users who only use FreeBSD. This keyboard works out of the box with problems in the installed system with the desktop. And does not work at all if you boot from the standard FreeBSD live-dvd image (I overcame the first problem, but not the second). Otherwise, these are amazing keyboards with host-swap, PBT double-shot keycaps, gasket mount, a heavy case made of milled aluminum, fully programmable with open source software.

An advantage for programmers is the separate INS key, which does not merge with other keys tactilely (Keychron Q2). And also blue switches, which allow you to be sure of pressing both by sound and tactilely.

Another interesting keyboard for programmers, I think, is the Vortex Race 3 (VTG-8200). This keyboard is interesting because it has an enlarged ESC key. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the ESC key for vimers and even Emacs users. The problem is that there is no INS key on the keyboard. It would seem that this is not a big deal, because this key can be replaced by the Fn + Delete combination. But if you want to do Shift-Ins to paste the console output into the browser, for example, then it will not be very convenient for you to do this.

If you know of any other mechanical keyboards with larger ESCs, please let me know.

I think that before buying a keyboard 40%, 60% should check the presence of keys important for a programmer: [, ], {, }, ESC, INS. For example, the Vortex Core keyboard does not have many of them, although this keyboard was supposedly positioned for geeks. I think that a programmer's keyboard should be no bigger than TKL, have larger and/or separate ESC and INS keys (maybe change the color, size and profile of the keycap to a larger size and bright color). Large black letters with a beautiful font on a white background (like Vortex Race 3), which are clearly visible.

Lastly, it is very good to write correctly working programs on such a keyboard.

 

[Phishfry]

I was looking for a nice tiny mobile keyboard and I stumbled into the Havis brand.

DISCONTINUED - Havis Rugged Keyboard with Integrated Touch Pad and Emergency Key | KB-108 | Havis Inc

Buy DISCONTINUED - Havis Rugged Keyboard with Integrated Touch Pad and Emergency Key | KB-108 . For customer support, call 1.800.524.9900.

www.havis.com

I bought two and they seem rugged. That is for sure. The VESA 75mm mounting holes made it worth the 60 bucks.

Previously I was a Zippy EL guy. The backlighting is nice. But they really are not great nor rugged.

Zippy Electroluminescent EL-610 Mini-Keyboard - PCSTATS.com

Zippy Electroluminescent EL-610 Mini-Keyboard - PCSTATS.com

www.pcstats.com

Zippy EL-715 Keyboard

Dell Laptop keyboards went chicklet style about 10 years ago. That makes me sad.

 

[Phishfry]

What is your favorite Keyboard Backlight Color?

My Dells use White while the Zippys were Backlit Blue. I had transplanted a AlienWare keyboard into my Dell Lattitude giving me a Red Backlight.

Red Backlight was enjoyable for a change but I don't know if I like it so. Almost too blunt.

I find myself working in dim areas and lighted keyboard is helpful. I am not a natural typist. I still have to look.

 

[Phishfry]

Confessions of a non-typist.

I used to remove the Caps Lock button from any keyboards I owned. Why do you need that anyway. Screaming is not polite.
I found myself hitting the 'Caps Lock' button too much by mistake when I started typing.

 

[Espionage724]

I'm not sure if it's my favorite (it works good), but I like the way EPOMAKER x LEOBOG Hi75 looks

Yeah. To me PS/2 is THE keyboard interface, and should stay.

I'm into low-latency and I'm pretty sure PS/2's the same as CRT monitors: Nothing else compares

There's something about PS/2, interrupts, and polling vs USB that would have a 125Hz PS/2 mouse sound good.

What is your favorite Keyboard Backlight Color?

Slow-fading rainbow spectrum. I'm fine with blue, but I like showing off RGB

I used try remove the Caps Lock button from any keyboards I owned. Why do you need that anyway. Screaming is not polite.

I use it on password re-type verification; Shift in the first prompt, and caps the 2nd prompt to make sure I typed the Shift right

 

[ShelLuser]

Cherry.

I am a die-hard Cherry fan and that will never change. Not after what I experienced!

True story (this happened 6 or so years ago) => when I moved from my town of birth to where I am now I obviously brought my stuff with me. Thing about me: I used to smoke "back in the days" (= a long time ago) but my keyboard still dealt with that aftermath. This was a Cherry keyboard and when it died... I really wanted it back.

So.. I ended up looking for (and finding!) the official (!) German Cherry website. Before this I never realized that it was a German brand and another thing about me: Germany is my #1 vacation destination where Berlin is my absolute #1. If I ever get rich I plan to buy myself some kind of house in Berlin; not necessarily fancy (no mansion or crap), just a spatious cool house. Might even be an appartment building.

But back ontopic: I looked on the website but "my" keyboard was no where to be fuond. So ... I contacted the Cherry company, and told them about my died keyboard and asked them if this could somehow be rebuild? Guess what? => it could!

Now, this wasn't cheap (obviously!!) but I paid approx. E 120,- for my new keyboard. And then I waited... and waited.. and waited... and after 3 months, just as I was about to give up hope: there it was! That keyboard easily lasted me yet another 12 or so years before I kinda grew tired of it. A friend of mine needed an "easy keyboard" so I gave him mine and bought myself a new "waterproof Cherry". The plastic coating was horrible, but once I removed it... this became my current #1.

I still use that keyboard today, but if it would ever expire... then my next keyboard ... Cherry.

Heck.. I even have a Cherry "server keyboard" with build-in touchpad. Awesome for setting up an X11 powered FreeBSD server (and / or Windows box) )