[PLUG] Need a new laptop

[Robert Munro]

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> On Mon, 12 May 2014, Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 12 May 2014, Paul Heinlein wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 12 May 2014, Rich Shepard wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Mon, 12 May 2014, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>>>> Not everybody agrees with us.  My son types a lot, and
>>>>>>> likes the new keys. He likes the very short travel. I
>>>>>>> suffer errors due to the short travel. Since these new
>>>>>>> keys are becoming dominant, I expect that the young
>>>>>>> turks driving the market have the fine motor skills to
>>>>>>> benefit. The pain of being in the minority!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Or, it's that they grew up pressing specific areas on a
>>>>> flat screen such as those on 'smart' phones and tablet
>>>>> computers and have no experience with an actual computer
>>>>> keyboard or typewriter.
>>> 
>> I grew up on typewriters and IBM-esque keyboards, and I love the
>>  short-throw chiclet keyboards. I'd never willingly go back.
> 
> It's great when each of us has the choice of preferred hardware,
> but we don't always have that choice.

I learned to type at Benson HS, but I didn't learn to keyboard well
until I had to use an IBM 029 keypunch machine. Having to redo whole
cards for single character keypunch errors taught me to be accurate.

Then I used teletype terminals for a couple of years. I spent years
using dumb terminals hooked to IBM mainframes, and those had better
keyboards even though they only worked in uppercase. When the IBM PC
came out its keyboard was much like any mainframe terminal keyboard,
except that it used ASCII not EBCDIC and had lowercase letters, too.

When so-called 'portable' PCs came along I bought one, and used that
for a couple of years until the IT management consulting firm that I
worked for bought everyone notebook PCs. I didn't build a desktop PC
until the mid-90s, but it was so nice to have a real keyboard again.

Now I have a Thinkpad for backup, but I prefer a full-size keyboard.

* * *

As this thread suggests, some people care a lot about their keyboard
preferences and take care to find what pleases them, especially when
choosing a laptop or notebook, if they can't put up with the hassles
involved in lugging around an external keyboard. Others don't really
know what they prefer or don't care enough to make it a priority, so
they end up struggling with keyboards that don't actually suit them.

Unfortunately, I can think of a few former and present colleagues in
this category, as is readily apparent when they are chatting online.
Either that, or they are such sloppy typists that they look retarded
(no offense to the disabled intended). Still others adjust or evolve
their keyboarding skills to use whatever they have to work with well
enough to remain reasonably proficient no matter what that might be.

Most people probably fall in this category given time and necessity,
but of course it's always easier to use a keyboard that pleases you.

How nice it would be if some laptop OEM would offer keyboard choices
like scalloped versus flat keys and solid or light touch key travel,
independent of specifications such as display size, processor speed,
graphics chip, amount of memory and hard disk versus SSD, and so on.

Lenovo has the engineering chops and market share to do this, and so
does HP. But no, instead they focus on filling every marketing niche
with completely different model lines over-engineered to perfection.

* * *

(These nested PLUG mailing list quotes often remind me of the writer
John Barth and his uproariously amusing Menelaiad that he would read,
with slides illustrating those storytelling gymnastics, decades ago.

As one writer noted, "Barth has a field day letting Menelaus tell the
tale of conversations with different people at different times [....]

“”””This is frustrating!”””” he said, she recounted, he told me, I say."

I saw him present that, and by the time he got a few levels deep
people started chuckling. At six levels of quotes, he brought the
house down.)

Robert

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