Best Keyboard Ever™

[Doc]

My keyboard looks just like the IBM Model M, but it says "Key Tronic Corporation" on the back (dated 10-03-90). It's my favorite keyboard ever. Newer keyboards just don't feel right. They're small, light, and the keys neither feel nor sound "right." Laptop keyboards are the absolute worst. *shivers*

-Lemmy
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The Powerbook 1400 from Apple used heavy duty scissor springs and had the same tactile feel as a heavy duty workhorse keyboard. It was also tough as a tonka truck and nearly indestructable. It was known as the Volvo of Powerbooks. People still talk about, and demand, that people make laptop keyboards like that one, instead of these spongy awful things they have now. It had a wonderfully annoying clackity clack as you typed. Drove people crazy. Critics called it the noisiest keyboard for a laptop ever, but everybody that used it loved it. You could hammer away on that thing and get satisfying tactile feedback.

Of course, it weighed almost 8 pounds too. And the noise... The noise is just to much. I could only imagine what would happen if you started typing your papers out on an airplane full of sleeping people. Of if you took notes with it in a college classroom.

Er sorry for being a keyboard nerd. I come from a different generation of computer users. We like big solid clonky mechanically noisy keyboards because they remind us of typewriters. It warms my heart to see some of you younger folks that love your big honking solid keyboards. :wub: Not to many people remember what typewriters were like... How hard you had to press on some keys to make the mechanics work. Or how the space bars on certain brands of typewriters liked to stick so they made it nice and wide so you could slap it with your hand to make sure it worked. And once you learn these things, they don't seem to unlearn themselves from your memory. I smash the keyboard when I am typing. Some of you younger folk type so lightly that it makes me cringe... I wonder if the input will make it in to the machine... keyboards now are so pussified. Soft. Squishy. Fragile feeling.

It's strange, seeing the world change. On the internet, if you are angry, YOU TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPS! Way back in the day, if you had a typed letter, you could tell if somebody was pissed off by the indentations of the keystrokes on the paper. A furious typist would leave noticeably deep dents in the paper from bashing out stroke after stroke on the keyboard. You could actually see which part of the letter they were at the peak of their anger, because the letters would be so bold and deep... You knew they had to be raising their hands up to shoulder level and jamming their fingers down in to the keys, hammering out their venom at you. You can't see that now online. But it would be a cool technology if somebody invested some sort of font that registered how hard you were smashing your keyboard as you typed. I think only us old timers would really get that though. I doubt the younger folks would like it. They would just continue hammering stuff out in caps yelling "OMG STFU NOOB!" at each other.

Sorry, the old man is rambling again.