Keyboard conservatism

I’ve just considered how conservative keyboard manufacturers are. Look at your keyboard right now. At every key. And think when was the last time you used it.

Letters, numbers, ESC, Enter, and spacebar are about the most used ones. Ctrl, Alt, Shift are too. Backspace and Delete get a share of their usage. That’s about it for frequent keys.

Home, End, Page Up and Page Down were much more useful before. Not anymore, I guess. Most people prefer either a shortcut or a mouse click or scroll. I don’t know anyone personally who have used Insert key at least five times in the last ten years.

Function keys (F1, F2, F3, …) used to be very useful in DOS times. I know a few people who use them these days, but those are very few.

Tab is very useful for programmers and system administrators. Not much so for the rest of the world.

Caps Lock and Scroll Lock are the two keys that I’ve never used. Caps Lock in fact does more harm than good.

Sys Rq, Break, and Pause – hardly anyone knows what these keys can be used for.

My point is that times change, software changes, needs change. But the keyboard hasn’t changed much in it’s lifetime. Mouse is a much simplier device, but it went through a whole bunch of evolution changes (trackballs, optical mice, scroll wheels, one-two-three-…-ten buttons, sizes, shapes, etc). Keyboard? No.

There are just a few modifications that I’ve seen – blank keyboard (no letters on buttons), LED keyboard (which is still in prototype), hacking keyboard (no caps lock, no number pad on the right). That’s about it.

Do you know of any other interesting keyboards (no multimedia keyboards, please)? Do you like this keyboard conservatism?

4 thoughts on “Keyboard conservatism”


  1. Actually Insert, Home, End and Function keys are actively used for various shortcuts.

    SysRq/Scroll/Pause/Caps – well they just take up space. As well as Menu and Win key :)


  2. Personally, I use PgUp/Down, Home and End buttons a lot, especially when writing some texts (and I have to write some every day), or PgUp/Down when browsing the web and going through the mail.

    Insert key? I use it daily, because I use Vim and I prefer Insert key over “i” key.

    F1/2/3. Here I can agree on 60%, because F2 is frequesntly used by me in a Alt+F2 combination (too lazy to go over menus or click on shortcuts if I do remember the name of the command, which in most cases I do).

    Pause key was and still remains a nice button during the boot of the system, if you want to stop for a second and review something. I am not using it a lot, rarely, but at least I know how to use it ;)

  3. Personally, I use PgUp/Down, Home and End buttons a lot, especially when writing some texts (and I have to write some every day)

    I thought you use Vim. Why then do you use PgUp/Down, Home, End so much? That’s really inconvenient as you have to move your hand far away from the main part of the keyboard. Ctrl-F/Ctrl-B are the same as PgUp/PgDn. ^ is the same as Home. $ is the same as End.

    PgUp/Down when browsing the web

    I use either a scroll wheel, or scroll wheel +Alt. To scroll down I also use Space. To move fast around a long page I use searches.

    and going through the mail.

    I use mutt. Things are much easier and faster with it. And I can use any keys I want to navigate around. ;)

    Insert key? I use it daily, because I use Vim and I prefer Insert key over “i” key.

    I don’t understand why are you using Vim then. Vim’s greatest benefit is its optimization for the keyboard. And you are not using it at all, from what I see.

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