I have a full-sized and a 96%. I don't know how people live without a numpad. Even my laptop has a numpad. I don't do excel shit. But at work I have to enter alot of phone and CC numbers. At home I use the numpad for rating photos when sorting and importing them.
I’m gonna catch some heat…. But I gotta speak my truth - this is all I need. I game, I program, I have 2 function keys that change the layout and provide access to any keys not physically present.
I've been trying a 75% tenkeyless but I do miss the number block haha. I really want to switch to a split ergo though, but it's a bit of investment to learn and configure.
I love this meme, but I feel like including TKL in the circle would be a little more fitting. I know I'm a little biased for being a TKL user, but they really aren't that esoteric. Every key is where you expect it. It just doesn't have a numpad.
I literally will not ever daily use a keyboard if it doesn't have a number pad.
Any time I'm forced to temporarily use anything without a num pad I feel like I'm driving a car that's missing half it's steering wheel or something. It just feels wrong.
While I love my full-sized keyboard, respectfully - who cares. The whole idea of a PC is the freedom to use whatever you want.
Keyboards, controllers, speech to text, a wii-mote, literal bananas/bread, eye/blink trackers, whatever suits you best. Insisting there's a best device for everyone doesn't change people's minds and just leads to hostility when we should be glad more people are using the device that makes them happy. One day you might be one of them when your circumstances or preferences change.
my favorite keyboard that i can remember was some bullshit off-brand apple thing from the early 2000s when USB accessories were super novel. rescued from a dumpster, not related to other Apple trash that belonged in the dumpster. full size numpad, super satisfying clicky clacky. several different shades of puke in color. took that to work and told IT to take their stuff and go
I dropped my full sized keychron a while back and the pcb got screwed up at the usb c port, so I'm stuck on a 60%. It's nice to have the extra desk space, but I'd be completely lost if I didn't have a macropad. Even still, it's kind of a pain in the ass sometimes. Eventually I'll be not-broke enough to justify getting a new pcb, hopefully, but I'm not even sure how to order just a pcb from them. Giant pain in the ass.
I do like my little Newman board, though. It has some nice linears that I lubed up and I've got a tape mod on it. I miss qmk but it's better than a membrane at least.
Originally I picked it up to use with my phone so I could get work done on the road without slowing my typing speed to a crawl and grappling with autocorrect. Made a decent backup!
You'll have to pry my 70% and 75% keyboards from my cold dead hands. Smaller keyboards are much more ergonomic if you need to also regularly use the mouse.
Imagine the market being saturated with all kinds of keyboards in various form factors and layouts and someone holding you accountable for what you're using.
I used to think I can't do without an F-row. Nowadays I use a bunch of 60-ish boards (a Boardwalk, a Lily58, an Elora) and it's all fine. Even back when I was using a 75%, I was used to have e.g. the arrows on IJKL on a layer (of course it doesn't work well for games, but for things like text editing I'd argue it's even better than dedicated keys). In general I'd suggest to everyone to challenge themselves a little bit with things that don't seem good at first but might end up being useful in the long run.
I went from a 100% membrane to a 60% mechanical, then a ~63% (think the 60% one but ONLY with extra arrow keys) then to a tenkeyless minus some of the useless keys, now to a full tenkeyless one
I currently have a Corsair K95 with the macro key row to the left, I really want to use a TKL keyboard so I dont bump into it all the time with my mouse. At the same time I would also like to have a numpad are there any keyboards that combine those two things so a row of macro keys and a numpad (southpaw) on the left?
I was a cashier, then a bookkeeper during the time when both heavily used the "10-key" and got really fast at touch typing numbers. Not as fast now, but I would be absolutely lost without it for spreadsheets, calculations, etc. I wouldn't even consider a keyboard without one!
Number pads are obsolete. If you need to type more than one number at a time, you should be asking yourself "What am I doing wrong such that I have to type all these numbers out?" We live in an age where every document is digital, and number pads are exclusively useful for transposing numbers from paper in bulk.
They're not even a good design, there's no tab, only enter, so they don't even support putting numbers into a spreadsheet super well.
Like so many things, it really depends on what you're doing. I've worked a lot of different jobs, and some absolutely require a numpad and some I've never touched it. What people really need is programmable keyboards. If you need a numpad you don't have to even move your hands if you program it right. Same with function keys. It's better for you long term. So I'd actually suggest a smaller but programmable keyboard for everyone, even if they don't use the numpad, plenty of great features on these keyboards.
The best keyboard I managed to find from all keyboards I've ever used (including high end mechanical ones) is.. 96%, keychron q6. Embrace mental disability, it feels so incredibly good
i love my 60% keyboard. i rebound the caps lock key to be a modifier key that swaps the functions of several keys on the keyboard. i basically have two keyboards stacked on top of each other that i can switch between at will. e.g., when caps lock is held: the number keys turn into Fn keys, WASD turns into the arrow keys, and N, M, < turn into the volume down, mute, and volume up keys, respectively.
i also changed the rgb colors on the keyboard so this is all color coded in case i forget.
I was looking to get a mechanical keyboard. 8bitdo seemed to be recommended by some folks, but they don't have the full-sized one with the 10-key here in Japan. Looks like I'm waiting.