I speculate that these keyboard layouts are designed by people who don't touch-type in English (or indeed in any roman language) and either didn't work to a brief prepared by westerners or didn't subject them to target-market usability testing. It's not a feature shared by, e.g., the HP mini series of netbooks.
Asus have gotten much better on this since roughly the Eee 1005, but if you're a touch-typist thinking of buying a netbook, check the keyboard before you buy it or you may end up spending weeks swearing at the device.
Gary @59: the one problem with the refurb you've got is that in about 12-18 months Apple will stop releasing security updates for its OS -- it's a PPC machine so won't run 10.6 or later. While 10.6 is current they'll continue releasing updates for 10.5. But when 10.7 comes out, 10.5 hits end-of-life. From then on, your machine will become increasingly vulnerable to security exploits.
On the other hand, by then you'll have had it for 5-6 years and the machine itself will be 8 years obsolete ...
]]>Plus: I suspect the black hat hackers will be writing malware for IA64 Macs than for the diminishing pool of elderly PPC architecture machines ...
]]>Evolution - it's not just for lifeforms! One wonders if somewhere out in space Beldar is thinking about getting his daughter one of the new 16G iMork's.
Does the end result everywhere for these sorts of machines look like a thin slab, whether the intelligence has six sets of pincers or a single tentacle cluster?
]]>let me elaborate:
I believe design is good industrial design when two conditions are fullfilled:
a) it looks pretty (to me, of course)
b) it's functional
Therefore, there are a lot of cases where, to me, Apple is the Bang&Olufsen of the computer-world. Yes, it may look very nice, but if some piece of design-fluff doesn't actually enhance my user-experience of the device, I don't want it.
Plus, frankly, I don't really like the Apple-look.
Also, whoever invented touchpads should rot in hell.
Me, I'm still happily using a ThinkPad X31 that I bought refurbished a few years back. Except for the power-connection, where I'd prefer the magsafe, to me, the Thinkpads are perfect examples of good design. They look cool and like real tools that you can get work done with. They are sturdy and don't fall apart on you and, unlike some Apples that I've test-driven, have keyboards you can type on as well as is possible on a laptop.
as for typing long texts, there is a holy grail of keyboards and its name is Model M. I got as close as I could and bought myself a DasKeyboard (which also has individual switches in each key, a defined pressure-point, tactile as well as acoustic feedback ("click"), a weight that means you could use it as a LART and it has the added bonus of being completely blank, earning me the "office-weirdo" title. Not that I wouldn't have that anyway). How a professional writer (who has, IIRC, stated he has wrist-problems) can type texts of any length on one of them mushy Apple-keyboards with barely 1.5 millimeters of key-travel .. *shudders at the thought*
If/when this here Thinkpad dies or I have the monetary possibility of replacing it, whichever happens first, I'm buying another one .. (currently (or rather last time I checked) that'd be the X200 or somewhere thereabouts. Another subnotebook, anyway).
]]>As for keyboards, I rather like my full sized JP keyboard (had to buy it from JBox). Colon, at-symbol, tilde and some others are all more convenient. The smaller rshift and space don't bother me at all. Only double and single quotes are in a bad place (2 and 7 keys), and I don't need them that much.
]]>But for the part that matters, i.e. the typing, it's just great.
Apparently there's a new keyboard coming out this year that should be even greater, in a way similar to the old "Happy Hacking Keyboard", i.e. small (only the size of the main key area, because after all that's all you need as a vim-user), blank, buckling spring technology AND with a track-point. If I didn't already have the DasKeyboard, I'd maybe go for that one. Lemme see if I can dig up the link ... ... hmm, my google-fu seems weak today.
]]>To this German-speaking-person, it seemed natural to, in English, say "the DasKeyboard", given how "das" is in this case a part of the productname (there is no blank between "das" and "keyboard" on the label).
But I get your point.
]]>I'm considering buying a new Tactile Pro once they're shipping outside NorAm, but the price is a bit off-putting. Might be worth getting a new PS2-to-USB dongle and trying the M-series again, but I'm not sure there's room on my desk. (The last dongle I tried had a fatal flaw: the "Windows" key was sent as a "Command" on the Mac, but didn't work as a modifier.)
]]>but I'm not.
So I buy kit and put it together or I buy thinkpads of ebay
but I can completely understand your choices
]]>also, re the DasKeyboard: I understand (too much time-distance between using the two) that the action itself is lighter than on a buckling spring type Model M, because it doesn't have a spring, it has the Cherry Microswitches. It doesn't feel like I need any force at all to press the keys. But there is still some tactile feedback. IMO, that's pretty perfect. Of course, my colleagues in the same office may have different opinions, what with the clicking.
]]>If you enjoy building your own PC, then great: been there, done that myself. But if your focus is on Getting Stuff Done Efficiently, rather than on first building the tools with which to get the stuff done, building your own PC is a drag.
]]>I'll grant you they need a docking station, and they're at the opposite end of the spectrum from the modularity you crave.
I disagree strongly about the merits of magsafe: it's saved my ass from a trip hazard numerous times.
Hypocee: that's because the bash shell you get by default gives you emacs key bindings. It's a UNIX shell. It does what a UNIX shell in a random terminal app is supposed to do, and gaily ignores your PC-world expectations.
]]>