new keyboard
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
It's that time again -- I've bought another keyboard. A "Filco" brand "Majestouch" that I love, love, love. It's got the "Cherry M" key whatsits under the hood, meaning that every key has its own dedicated spring and receiver. From what I read online after discovering the thing in a local store, the gamer crowd loves these things too, because they allow true simultaneous keys (up to six keys at a time, just what you need when blowing people's heads off with sniper rifles (and here I'm going by what I see the kids up to in Internet Cafes and computer stores)).
My recent keyboard is a defaced el-cheapo Japanese keyboard was starting to get a tad touchy and was causing me sore wrists. And, I'm happy to say that I've got some new text for my novel to punch in, so a good keyboard is a must.
I found the new one -- an English keyboard in Tokyo! -- while looking for as semi-rare battery for my old rangefinder camera. I bounced the idea off of Mari and did the aforementioned research and it looked like a winner. So, like anyone on a long-term budget I bought the $100 keyboard, my fifth (of varying cost) in the past 3 1/2 years.
Let's hope that this one fares better than the dud among them, the expensive wireless jobby from Logitech that wasn't really wireless (the receiver and keyboard had to be in immediate proximity of one another) . But least I'd worn some of the letters off that one before throwing it out.
Not so for the Model M that I bought from somewhere in the southern US. That thing was all of about six weeks old when I dumped a second (and fatal) cup of water into it, causing several keys to permanently stop working. I can't recall having ever dumped water into a keyboard, and that poor thing got it twice in a row. It's like the Fates knew that I'd finally sprung for a $180 keyboard after two decades with whatever free keyboard came with the computer. Damn you, Fates! Shhh, I didn't say that.
As for the cheapies, they do the job but the Japanese layout trips me up every time. After all these years, I'm still pretty much a frequent key-hunter (if only while writing software). And looking for the & or the @ and remembering that - was really = on those things drove me to actually file the characters off of most of the keys.
There was another el-cheapo lingering about the apparentment, a brutal mistake of a purchase which has a space "bar" about as wide as the Enter key. It had became a wireless keyboard when I cut off the USB cable, a thing I did so that Kenny would have his own keyboard to play with. He'd been playing with the "filed" el-cheapo too much, and was satisfied with his toy (it's still here in the living room, so it must be still in toy circulation).
As I wrote this, I remembered a sixth keyboard from my time here in Japan. A very small one, a simple rectangle that fit into the tiny hotel room where I was living for my first six months in the city. I think I gave it to the friend for some reason. I hope we're still friends, it was another $12 cheapo.