Exploring the beauty of retro electronics (Gallery)

[martinot]

(02-22-2018 01:57 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote:  I find beauty in most airplanes made during my 58-year lifetime, and in the very attractive HP-35s calculator above. The Casio calc above is not too bad lookin' either. I dislike the rest of what has been shown so far, especially the jelly-bean car. I make a ton of mistakes trying to type on thin, flat, short-travel keys on laptop computers. My main PC is a desktop and the keyboard has full-travel, cupped keys. I type well on this at 50+ wpm, while my secondary PC for the last six years has been a laptop and my typing on that thing is hopeless. I have not been able to get used to it and quit making so many mistakes. The track pad is a very poor substitute for a real mouse too. It does not work well at all. I want a laptop that's thick enough to have a real keyboard.

I can buy a thin keyboard design as a intentional compromise to make a product really portable. That said the 2015 MBP 15" above has a really good keyboard to be a portable. Almost as good as the ThinkPads I have had (which I think has the best keyboards).

The Surface Pro keyboard in the cover is really good for what it is (a think portable optional cover to the machine). The same goes for the Casio fx4000p; it is too thin and too short key press to be a really ergonomic "desk" calculator, but I can accept that as it's intended to be really portable and it's over all size target.

What I did not like was the 2017 MBP 15" with the Touch Bar I had as my previous company laptop. Terrible keyboard, and never got used to it. It was otherwise a great machine, but in this case I think Apple took it way to far in being thin (compared to its still relatively big and heavy).

Normally using my laptops on my desktops I prefer to have a good dedicated keyboard with good mechanical keys witches. I prefer Cherry MX Brown or MX Clears, and from either Ducky or Filco. You can get really good small ones. I also always change the key caps from standard ABS to good quality PBT ones.

Here is my favorite Ducky Mini keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches, and black PBT keycaps (with laser etched engraving for long use quality) used with my old ThinkPad X1 Carbon:




For some more pictures of my different mechanical keyboards I have a gallery of some here, including my favorite Filco wooden wrist rests (here in the rare 60% version I bought in Tokyo while on a trip, as they are quite rare outside of Japan):

https://www.sweclockers.com/galleri/1193...-inenheter

(It is a Swedish site, but should be OK to read descriptions of the types and my comments in English)