I cannot find much of a difference between good and bad keyboards.

I heard that Acer laptops have the worst keyboards, but I think they work well. I am able to type equally fast and accurately on any laptop keyboard, except for those annoying flat key keyboards. If I had a complaint, it applies to all laptop keyboards. I have an issue with the large keys because I have to adjust the way I position my fingers to type on a laptop keyboard. In the end, I do not think keyboards vary much from model to model. The Acer seems to have more flex, but I do not plan to place my entire weight on the keyboard every time I press a key. Do you think keyboards vary much from one manufacturer to another? Which is your favorite laptop keyboard?

 

A friend has a relatively inexpensive Toshiba laptop - I don't know the model - which I used briefly a few days ago. I liked the texture (texture??) of its keys. Not sure how else to describe what I'm trying to say. To me, most keyboards have a sort of slippery feeling - including those of my PowerBook and MBP.

Maybe I just need another coffee.

 

Eh, keyboards on laptops definitely affect typing speed.

It was hard getting used to my Thinkpad keyboard, but after using it for 3 years, I suddenly found my typing speed and accuracy on consumer keyboards with soft keys went drastically down. That said, although it takes a little bit of time to readjust, I don't mind the difference between softer keys and harder keys at all.

Flex is one thing I can't stand though. My Latitude keyboard felt like a sponge on steroids...each tap of a key would send the entire thing quivering up and down like a trampoline.

Also, I spent a whole year or so using a desktop ergonomic keyboard...then moving back to a laptop keyboard after that was...unnatural

One of these days, i gotta learn qwerty.

 

I think you need a coffee, too, taelrak. lol

 

Which Latitude did you own? #00, #10 or #20?

 

Personally, I mostly can't tell the difference between one keyboard to the next, only by some significantly more different keyboards like the one's on the Vaio SZ for instance,.

I've tried out some Thinkpad keyboards and their the same to me as many keyboards from more mainstream notebooks. I can't tell the difference. Don't shoot me!

 

*insert bunch of random stuff because it won't let me post anything under 10 characters*

D600

 

I am glad to hear that. I think that was the first Latitude model made. Dell has made many improvements since then.

 

Acer's curved up keyboard that improves ergonomics on the hand. The way the keys are positioned affected my speed of typing.
With my old HP's keyboard, i can type faster than my current typing speed on the Asus i'm using now. So i guess different keyboards do affect typing speed.

 

Huge factor to me. Biggest factor that has me locked into thinkpads.

I actually prefer this keyboard to even nice desktop keybaords.

 

All keyboards are pretty much the same for me. And that's desktop and laptop. I've really never felt the huge comfortability everyone talks about. Or the better reaction time. My brother got that MS ergonomic natural board, the one with the giant space down the middle between the G and H keys. Suppose to prevent carpal tunnel. He says when he goes back regular keyboards it hurts his hand now that he's used to it. Not worth the learning curve imo.

 

lol how do you know if you haven't found out yet?

don't trust your brother?

I haven't learned either for the same reason, and plus I mostly use notebook, but it might be worth it.

 

No, the box says it prevents carpel tunnel.

 

I totally agree. I think we make a big fuss about laptop keyboards. I've used many Lenovo, Dell, and HP keyboards, and they really don't feel that different. But I suppose the Key Travel does produce some slight variation.

 

I bought the Lenovo N200
I gotta say the keybard does feel slightly different than the standard laptop keyboards...
The only thing that really gets to me about this keyboard is that the Function key is placed where the Control key is supposed to be Also I had to remap my numpad because it wasn't doing what I wanted it to do (See N200 review thread)

 

Bad keyboards really hurt my wrists. that is all I can tell, it is a pretty big thing though.

 

I am coming from an HP DV9000t. It's been a couple of weeks since I got my new Thinkpad. I think I am starting to like the Thinkpad keyboard more and more.

 

The Toshiba M series notebooks have a terrible keyboard layout, atleast on the right hand side where the enter and shift keys lie. Some like the backslash, shift etc are terribly shortened, and make for awkward typing. PLusthe arrow keys are jammed in there and are far too easy to press by mistake. All this to accomodate the numeric keypad, but HP doesn't have this problem. Bad design by Toshiba, I still find it a problem half a year after buying it.

 

The new HP consumer line also have this keyboard where the right shift key is really short, about the size of a regular key. I find this REALLY annoying. Whenever I need to type capital letters with the right shift, 5 out of 10 times I always miss that right shift key.

 

The tactile feedback you get from the keys of different keyboard affect my typing. That's one of the reasons why I didn't get a Macbook Pro, the keys felt weird. Of course the biggest reason, and the main one, is that I couldn't affor a MBP. But yeah, when I use our family laptop (a fujitsu-siemens) the keys feel totally different, a bit spongey even, affecting my type-speed. And desktops feel eve more different, since the keys get pressed further in than on my laptop. Then there's the layout, which may affect you typing. After nearly 7 months, I still have some problems with my PgDn, End and Right Arrow button. They're all the same size and in a row, so when I want to press one, I might press one of the others. This happens rarely these days though.

 

My right shift key on my M-55 is twice the size of a regular key, if not a little bit more.

 

That was one of the reasons I got a Lenovo. Of the store demo n'books I checked out at compusa it was one of the few that still had all its keys. that and I still use a couple of IBM keyboards from the 80's for my desktops. The old dreadnought humongo ones with the keys that actually click when they make contact. They also lack a windows key, which I love.
I also hate mac-book keyboards. On a machine that costs so much they just feel toylike!

 

I love the clickity clackity old keyboards. It makes it sound like I type alot faster than I really do.

 

Other than obvious things like a lot of flex or poorly placed or oddly shaped keys, it comes down to personal preference and even anatomy. I have really small hands, so I type faster and more comfortably on very compact or even reduced size keyboards than I do on standard or desktop keyboards.

 

Man, I can understand preferences varying from soft and quiet to firm and clicky (mine), but people who vote they don't even care... why even at this site?

 

I don't recall typing in "notebookkeyboardreview.com" before coming here. Believe it or not, some people don't care at all about their keyboards and much more on the internals of the laptop. Just like some care about the looks and design, and others dont as long as they get the best performance.

 

amen to that. While I can totally apreciate the asthetics of a well designed sony or asus. My main computer is a homely Lenovo 3000 c200. Pretty much the ford taurus of laptops. It's got the same intel internals all the others do. Scored higher on the superpi test than my dual core opteron desktop. But its got a case only a mother could love. (though a cute redhead said hey nice computer earlier today)

 

She most likely liked you. It's like when you laugh too long at jokes that aren't that funny or funny at all.

 

lol it's all good man. Leaves more good keyboards for the rest of us!

 

My old Samsung M50 had the best keyboard I've used to date, I find there is a big difference between a normal keyboard and an exceptional keyboard.

 

Or she was being sarcastic...

 

That works too... (I'm never understand written sarcasm)

 

Only time I noticed the difference was on the Thinkpads. I swapped my T43 for an Asus and now I really miss using the Thinkpad's keyboard, the thinklight and trackpoint was very convenient too.

 

yeah, people forget that IBM stands for International Business Machines. They have been making keyboards longer than anybody. 100+ years!
next time you are in a supermarket, check out the cash register. Dont be surprised if its an IBM.
About the redhead, yeah maybe she likes me. I am famously dense when it comes to the fairer gender.

 

One post down.

 

This is not funny.

 

Yeah, it's not really funny. I thought it was a little funny in context to what calaveras said. Sorry if you found it offensive. Guess I'll just edit it.

 

Keyboards make a difference to me. Most are type-able, but the quirks irk me. Keyboards that cut off the right half of the backspace key to put the backslash there and extend the enter key up annoy me - I always end up getting lots of slashes in my documents when I mean to backspace. And thus typing speed falls. But the worse I've used are the ones Apple shipped with their iMacs around the turn of the century - those keys stick horribly!

 

on the same note, GM created Opel and Coca-cola created fanta so they could get around the laws and cooperate with the Nazis. It is really despicable how many big American capitalists were completely in bed with the fascists. There was even a plot to stage a coup here in the US that involved people prety high in industry. Luckily the person they wanted to step in as a figurehead tipped off the feds.
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/53-index.html

but speaking of worse keyboards I am going back into the mists of time to nominate the Atari 400 and the Timex Sinclair. The 400 had a membrane keyboard, which was fine for cassette decks and such, but not for typing!

The Sinclair had the dreaded chiclet keys.

 

Yeah, I learned all that from watching The Corporation or something. Same?

And back to teh keyboards, there is one thing I do not like. I'm not sure what it is but sometimes the caps lock key is placed weirdly so that sometimes I hit the caps lock instead of teh shift.