The avarage user doesn’t need all the buttons accessible at every moment as such are willing to trade convenience for space saving and cost reduction. Some people though mainly professionals with hyper specific niches go the opposite direction and trade space and cost for oversized keyboards in the name of efficiency.
Belive it or not just like click switches, large keyboards still popup within the mech keyboard community. Hyper 7 being the most well known (and has a group buy currently going) but there’s also the wombat 200% which features twenty rotary encoders. Some people have been getting the best of both worlds by utilizing a modular mindset. A 75% keyboard with an external numpad and macro pad has the same functionality as a battleship.
Ok the Hyper 7 totally blew me away. Absolute overkill hit damn I wish I had money to burn on that right now.
I’m the type that has to have the number pad, I play a lot of older games that tend to be much easier to play with it for keyboard shortcuts, and I’m just way better at typing numbers invites the top row.
I don’t know but I feel the same. My main gripe is with media keys, because I don’t want Fn key combinations, but dedicated media buttons, which is increasingly rare. The most appealing keyboard I have laid eyes on recently is Das Keyboard which has a volume wheel, media keys and is full size, but it’s very pricey and not perfect still.
5W diode laser and Cricut brand infusible ink. I don't know how deep it penetrates, but 2% @ 45mm/s puts down a muted but easily readable legend on PBT that doesn't come off with 91% IPA or 100% acetone nail polish remover.
I’ve had fairly decent luck with ordinary dry-erase markers and the cheap Neje engraver (possibly 1W, maybe 1.5W, I don’t remember) that’s basically made out of old DVD-ROM stepper motors.
I actually wore out the laser after doing a few hundred caps, so I’m waiting for a new one in the post.
One of the bigger problems is predictable mounting so if you do 10 keys in a row, they’re aligned. A jig helps, like gluing a spare switch to the engraver bed.
Was definitely planning for a jig, though I hadn't got as far as planning for something to do multiple keys, and yeah, switches would be the obvious choice for mounting securely. Some sort of quick-n-dirty fabricated plate would give the type of predictable spacing that could work. Gotta get that initial placement just right, though. :-)
Obviously our engravers are pretty different models, but what sort of settings are you using, and what sort of shades are you able to pull from the dry-erase? I notice that the "cardinal" and green I was able to get were not a world apart from the old Cherry 9009 keyboards that inspired the GMK set. I also wonder if the chemical composition of Cricut's "infusible ink," at least the dye, is much different than dry-erase.
Its specs and features include anodized aluminum body, double-shot PBT keycaps, Kailh MX Red switches, as well as multi-device connectivity.
Like the thousands of other bog standard 60% keyboards. Looks like it’s primary “innovation” is offering multi-device bluetooth for $99 without swappable switchs, which makes me doubt that it’s anything close to “a masterpiece of elegance and performance”.
Kinda tired of random other thing manufacturers deciding to enter the keyboard market by building the same goddamn thing as everyone else. You want to disrupt a market? Try making an ergo mechanical keyboard with swappable switches that won’t kill our wrists in 5 - 10 years for less than $300.
Yeah, that's unusual. I mean, gaming is their target audience, and nearly all PC gamers have a Windows PC, but still. I'm sure plenty of people who use Mac or Linux at work would love an NES-themed keyboard.
I have an 8bitdo controller and arcade stick, and they're fantastic. If this keyboard used QMK, it would be a must-have for me.
That probably has to do with the software. It’s a wireless keyboard, so it doesn’t support VIA and uses its own proprietary software instead, which probably won’t work in Linux or MacOS.
I’m just disheartened on the number of otherwise beautiful keycap sets that fail to use symbology for special keys. I’m talking shift, tab, enter, backspace, caps lock, num lock, home, end, page up, page down…
I use keyboards in the 40%-65% range. For me it is about reduced travel. Almost no travel for typing any key and minimal travel for the mouse.
I wouldn’t use a keyboard that small if it wasn’t for QMK, the open source keyboard firmware. We essentially have dedicated layer keys. A key when tapped or held remaps the keyboard. For myself that is usually caps lock and a couple keys on the bottom row. I select keyboards that have the space bar split into 3-4 keys for this to work. 4 is preferred to put backspace next to space.
With 40 keys and 3 layers that’s (40 keys - 3 layer keys) * (1 base layer + 3 activated layers) = 148 keys within reach of home row. A full size is around 120 keys.
I’m used to software using “leader” keys like vim and tmux, so it never really bothered me to use layers. I don’t get why anyone would want their hands always moving to reach keys since I started using layers.
I’m a heavy VI user, but the one thing I can’t stand is HJKL navigation. Damn that to hell and back: I’d much rather stay in edit mode and move around with the arrow keys. HJKL can burn in hell. As for the numpad, I don’t use it too often, but when I have to type rows and rows of numbers in my code for some reason, I really miss it. And that curiously happens often enough that I prefer the numpad to remain firmly attached to the rest of the keyboard.
The mouse being closer isn’t an issue for me because, as I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I use a trackball.
I have a separate “macro pad”, essentially a numpad layout, also mechanical running QMK. I keep it to the right of the mouse. I don’t use it much anymore, but I do have the option.
I also have an MMO mouse for gaming. WoW, EvE, and FFXIV were too difficult with layers.
I don’t mind HJKL once I got used to it. My arrow keys are bound to caps lock + HJKL, lol.
I use a 45% with no dedicated number row. Been a couple years but I mained a Reaper. 12 buttons for my AoE rotation (plus a few utility) and another full 12 for single target. In early WoW days I got away with main abilities on 1-6, Q, E, F, G, R, X, Z and their modded versions (shift, ctrl). Without a number row, I just didn’t have enough keys. I probably could have come up with additional mod keys via layers to make it work, but the MMO mouse just made it easy to have a numpad at my thumb.
Macros like WoW would have helped also. The rotation was pretty predictable from what I remember unlike my Frost DK in WoW which was more proc based and like playing DDR on my keybinds.
QMK (rather, “easily” accessible keyboard firmware creator) makes keyboard less and less reliant on having a dedicated button for all of the functionalities provided by full size.
No need to move out of homerow is super nice, especially if you dont need to use your mouse frequetly.
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