I'm having trouble sleeping (2007-04-06 02:45) so It's time to rant.

Modern keyboards suck. The only people who will deny this are the people who make or sell them. Here's a list of what is wrong with them.

• They are flimsy. I had one crack when the cat jumped on it.
• The labeling on the keys is painted on and wears off quickly.
• They have useless keys. Everything done with the windows and multimedia keys can be done with chords of standard keys.
• They provide no aural or tactile feedback
• They are too light. I don't like having to reposition the keyboard during normal use

It wasn't always this way. Hardware manufacturers made products to last. The most noted was the IBM model M series with the bucking spring key switches.

• They provide tactile and aural feedback.
• They are also tanks. You can beat a man to death with one, plug it in and type away.
• The labeling is molded into the key with a contrasting color of plastic
• They are heavy, something like 5 lbs.
• They have fewer useless keys than most modern keyboards

There were others that used Alps sliders (Focus, Dell, Fujitsu). They aren't as sturdy as the IBMs but quit clickey. Cherry switches are supposed to be good but I've never seen one.

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This is the ideal keyboard. I know there are many religious issues here, anyone who disagrees with me is an evil heretic and will be going to hell.

• The "F" keys are to the right of the alphabetic cluster. This is to make the home keys as close to the center of the keyboard as possible.
• The navigation and cursor keys are gone. All their functions are duplicated on the keypad
• The Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and Num Lock keys light up.
• The labeling is molded into the keys. Ideally, there would be swappable key caps or transparent key caps so people could do their own labeling.
• It lacks the windows and media keys
• It has IBM style key switches.
• It is wireless. What would be really cool is one that is charged by ambient light or inductively where one side of the coil is inside the desktop.
• All the keys are user programmable.
• I'm thinking it would be nice to have a Trackpoint between the "G", "H" and "B" keys and a Scrollpoint between the "G", "H" and "Y" keys, but I've never actually used one of these.