Dear Keyboard Manufacturers:

Dear Keyboard Manufacturers:

It seems to me that while you’re spending a lot of time creating special keyboards for gamers, you could be putting a little of that R&D and design know-how to use in creating special keyboards that would be useful for, oh, people who have to use them all the time at work. “But regular keyboards are fine for that,” you say. I say: no they aren’t, you asses, else I wouldn’t be making this post.

Let’s take my job, for example. I’m a Web Producer. I spend 75% of my day doing repetitive tasks like copying and pasting, performing the same three functions over and over in photoshop, and clicking between windows and tabs. You know what would be nice? A set of keys on the left side of the main key area that are programmable. One click access to the 10 most important functions would save me a lot of time and stave off carpal tunnel for a few years, at least.

There are many, many web producers and print producers and graphic designers and data entry personnel and other people in other jobs who could use such a thing. I don’t see why gamers are the only ones who get special keyboards. Most of them can’t be appropriated to business use because the special keys are on the right side of the keyboard (except this one), but right-handed people use that hand for the mouse. You suck, keyboard manufacturers!

Instead of spending time rolling out natural keyboards that aren’t really all that ergonomic or useful, try designing something actually helps someone.

No love,
Me

7 thoughts on “Dear Keyboard Manufacturers:

  1. Creating specialized keyboard hardware is all about creating something that will sell so that you can manufacture enough of them to get the cost down. Because of the wide array of different User needs, this has never been much of a market.

    You seem to have never heard about the keyboard macro programs… tons of them for both mac and pc. I have been using Quickeys since the late 1980’s and I refuse to do repetitive task more than about 3 times before setting up a macro.

    they let you automate things by assigning tasks, text or macros to your keys… will speed up your work immensely. You don’t need a special keyboard.

    1. I’ve never had much luck with macros, mainly because I have too many tasks that are repetitive. Additionally, it seems to me that it shouldn’t be hard to create a row of keys on the left that can be assigned different keystrokes and functions, which should do for a large swath of the market.

  2. Hey, don’t talk to me about keyboards, I had to pop off the alt key to get out some fluff and now I can’t get it back on for love nor money.

  3. For srs! In the meantime, if you have enough money to spend on such things, you might want to consider getting a programmable keyboard add-on thingy for your left hand. They make them for gaming, mostly, but you can set them up to do whatever you want. Thinkgeek has a couple different kinds: the pro-gamer command pad and the super-deluxe (and awesome looking) DX1.

    My RSI is so out of control that I learned to mouse ambidextrously, so I switch from right to left every few hours. So left-handed mousing even as a right-handed person can be an option, too.

    But I would love to be able to buy a wrist-friendly keyboard that’s optimized for the types of work I need to do.

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