Why buying a keyboard was harder than I thought
I recently bought a new keyboard, but immediately had to replace it. It worked, but it slowed down my typing.
Why Did I Need a New Keyboard?
I use my keyboard a lot. In addition to my “day job,” my hobby is making websites/apps. Every few years, part of the keyboard stops working. This time time in particular, one of the keys was “sticking.”
Just go to the store and buy one, right?
As previously mentioned, I use my keyboard a lot.
Having a good keyboard is important to my productivity.
I know they sell “gamer” keyboards, for $100+. I don’t play computer games, so I didn’t think I needed one that expensive.
I don’t know what makes these “gaming” keyboards so expensive, but my guess is that it can detect key-presses within tenths of a second (or faster?). For those playing computer games, I imagine this could be the difference of winning or losing.
Again, that’s a guess: I didn’t Google “advantages of gaming keyboards” before posting this. 😯
I found a reasonably priced wireless keyboard with some of the features I was looking for (wireless, comes with a wireless mouse) for $20 and bought it. I quickly realized that this keyboard was slowing me down and I needed to replace it.
Not All Keyboards Are the Same
There were two problems with this keyboard, that I didn’t realize until after using it.
Problem 1: the F Keys were all together
I use the F5 key surprisingly often. As a web developer, I press it to refresh the browser’s page. In SQL Server Management Studio, that’s the keyboard shortcut for running a query.
I typically don’t look at the keyboard when I type. With my keyboard, I can “feel” for the F5 key because there’s often a gap between the F4 and F5 keys. This new keyboard didn’t have that.
Having to pause my typing to look for the F5 key slowed me down.
Problem 2: Back Slash placement
On this new keyboard, shape of the Enter key was a little taller than I was used to. This caused the placement of the back slash key (“\”) to go next to the Enter key.
On my previous keyboard, the backslash was above the Enter key.
While I don’t type the backslash key that often, my pinky had to move a little further when pressing Enter. This obviously caused some typos.
Lessons Learned
You may not know what you’re missing, until you don’t have it. I was pleased to find a keyboard that I thought would suit my needs, for a reasonable price, but it didn’t occur to me to look for the details (features) that I took for granted.
I suppose another lesson is the typical “you get what you pay for.” To find a similar keyboard with the features I wanted (wireless, comes with a wireless mouse, and the two mentioned in this article), it’s going to cost more than the one I originally purchased.
