{"id":23,"date":"2004-02-01T03:34:56","date_gmt":"2004-02-01T11:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=23"},"modified":"2009-12-05T03:41:34","modified_gmt":"2009-12-05T11:41:34","slug":"recurring-keyboard-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/archives\/2004\/02\/01\/recurring-keyboard-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Recurring keyboard dream"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For anyone curious about what&#8217;s so special about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/archives\/2003\/12\/20\/the-keyboard-of-my-dreams\/\" class=\"unemphasized\">my dream keyboard<\/a> that I mentioned last December:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"expanded\">\n<li><strong>Buckling-spring construction.<\/strong>  It&#8217;s  equivalent to an old IBM Model-M keyboard.  Unlike the flimsy, cheap membrane keyboards most people use, buckling-spring keyboards are solid, are built like tanks, and last forever.  True, they are much noisier, but my typing already sounds like a jackhammer, so it shouldn&#8217;t be much worse.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Integrated TrackPoint.<\/strong>   Some people hate these things, arguing that a normal mouse is better.  While I won&#8217;t argue with that, a TrackPoint and a mouse aren&#8217;t mutually exclusive.  Modern operating systems support multiple pointing devices; why not use both?  If you need to do a lot of mousing and only a bit of keyboarding, use the mouse.  If you need to do a lot of keyboarding but only a bit of mousing, you can use the TrackPoint <em>without taking your hands off of the keyboard<\/em>.  It&#8217;s the best of both worlds.  It rocks for coding, and I think all keyboards should have this.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Windows keys.<\/strong>   Some people hate these things too, arguing that they&#8217;re nearly useless.  If they bother you that much, there are versions without them.  Me, I think they&#8217;re useful.  Use an application such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.copernic.com\/winkey\/\" class=\"unemphasized\">WinKey<\/a> to assign keyboard shortcuts to Windows-key combinations.  For example, I set <kbd>Win<\/kbd>+<kbd>p<\/kbd> to open the command prompt, <kbd>Win<\/kbd>+<kbd>i<\/kbd> set to start my web browser, and <kbd>Win<\/kbd>+<kbd>v<\/kbd> to open my volume controls.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For anyone curious about what&#8217;s so special about my dream keyboard that I mentioned last December: Buckling-spring construction. It&#8217;s equivalent to an old IBM Model-M keyboard. Unlike the flimsy, cheap membrane keyboards most people use, buckling-spring keyboards are solid, are built like tanks, and last forever. True, they are much noisier, but my typing already [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantsraves","category-usability","tag-keyboards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}