Keyed Up

My pal Tony sent me this shot of his old Olympia manual typewriter keyboard. Amazing how few keys we got by with.

Olympia Portable Keyboard

Nowadays we have a lot more keys to worry about – not to mention that weird little pre-trackpad ‘wart’ for cursor control.

HP Portable Keyboard

Then there’s your typical home PC keyboard. I think I paid a whole $7 for this one. Very light, very cheap but works fine on Mac or PC.

KeyTronic Cheapie Keyboard

Then came the ‘split and twisted’ scheme to minimize RSI*. There’s successively more and more compliant versions of these – one that has the keys in ‘pockets’

MS Ergo Keyboard

Then there’s the truncated Apple iMac keyboard that was on my jukebox – I decided to try the KeyTronic cheapie and it works fine. Better set of control keys.

Apple early-generation iMac keyboard

My current keyboard – the Matias Tactile Pro. It’s noisy but it types very nicely. Five-year warranty.

Matias Tactile Pro Keyboard

Here’s all of em together for comparison.

* There’s an outstanding article on Repetitive Strain Injury by Tina Richardson at dopasolution.com. It’s fully WC3 compliant and should work properly with most if not all assistive technologies. Thank you Tina!