"...there's no action left in this keyboard."

Almost all modern computer keyboards start out with no action.

Rubber Membranes Anyone?

There was a time when only really crummy computers (eg Sinclair) would use something as nasty as a rubber- membrane keyboard, but gradually over the years this technology has spread to dominate computer keyboards. Whilst the technology's better than it was, it still suffers from serious problems:

  • Poor Action. It's generally hard to tell when you've hit a key and when you've not, and often you can't hit multiple keys rapidly and expect consistent results
  • Lack of Durability. The characters on my last membrane keyboard wore completely off some keys within a month of me starting to use it. The keyboard before that, I wore a hole in the control key. This is just with typing, not game playing. The live expectancy for a keyboard is much less than a year's sensible use.

I suppose that people don't buy computers based on the quality of the keyboard, and many buyers probably don't actually type. The success of devices like "Blackberries" with senior managers suggests that you can hold down a large salary whilst having no keyboard, punctuation or spelling skills. That's as maybe, but for people who actually use computers, this technology is seriously broken.

Industrial Design

Trying to type at any speed on dead flesh is bad enough, but most keyboards also suffer from "marketing" input: they have eye-catching designs, or extra features, all of which get in the way of those of us who just want to type. Typical useless "features" include:

  • Keys in the wrong place. Closing up the gap between F4 and F5 may look pretty, but it's a real pain if you're actually trying to type. For programmers and web users that f5 key is important, and being in a separate bank means that some guidance is helpful so you can hit it correctly every time without. Stick it bang up against the F4 and you take that away.
  • Extra keys. I know how to turn the volume down on my speakers: there's a knob provided for the purpose. I do not look at my keyboard to try to figure out which magic key I have to press, assuming I installed the right driver. At best, if I learned where these none-standard keys were, by then the membrane would be dead and I'd have another, different none-standard layout to learn.
  • Extra real-estate. Keyboards need to be the size of a standard keyboard layout. No smaller, no bigger. Huge "stylish" keyboards, curved keyboards, wrist rests, all that clutter is unhelpful. What doesn't fall off or break gets in the way of the mouse. Anything on the right hand side which isn't absolutely necessary is an ergonomic disaster.
  • Gizmos, gadgets, anything which isn't a standard key in a standard place. I don't want to have to read a manual to use a keyboard, I want to plug it in and forget it. That's the whole point of keyboards: they're not anything you should notice if they're right.

Keyboards for People who use Keyboards

For those of us who inwardly want to grab the keyboard we you see people in shops painstakingly trying to type with two fingers enhanced with grotesque nails, there has to be a better approach.

I finally ran out of patience with commercial keyboards when I spent some time cleaning up on old TTY43 which lives in my garage. That's an ancient teletype, but I remembered the action from when I first sat at one of the things, and it's as good today as it was in 1979. I briefly considered restoring the TTY and connecting it to my desktop, but fortunately for me I realized that it simply can't be that all keyboards are crap: someone out there must make and sell keyboards for keyboard users.

My local computer "sheds" have no decent keyboards at all. What they do have you can play with, but they're all uniformly awful. Wireless and fancy designs seem very popular. What do these people do with their keyboards - use them on their knees? The internet is more useful. My usual online retailer stocks around a hundred different membrane keyboards, but not a single "proper" keyboard. That's more radical than the computer shed in my view: this is a specialist retailer yet most of their customers still don't type much? A little more work turns up the DAS Keyboard, and from there I got to "Cherry switches". These are real switches for real keys as used by real typists. Cherry as a company makes lots of nasty membrane keyboards, and just one keyboard with real switches. You can tell which one it is as it's got the "worst" features-to-price ratio, as all your money's going into the keys, not the schmaltz.

Eventually I found a UK Filco Majestouch NKR Tactile Action keyboard from The Keyboard Company which uses the mid-feel Cherry brown switches. I didn't get to compare the action of the various Cherry switches, but these are fine. Less clicky than the old IBM keyboards, yet completely positive. So there you go, problem solved... my pile of knackered old membrane keyboards will grow no longer.