[jwr]

I am a big fan of old-style mechanical switches. In fact, I recently restored my old NTC keyboard from the 80s. But having tried to use it, I just can't get over the fact that these keyboards were seriously lacking modifier keys.

I need at least Ctrl, Alt and Command to work comfortably, and ideally also have Fn and Super. You can get away with remapping right-side modifiers to do something else, but you can't add a key that isn't physically there — so if the left side of the spacebar does not have at least three modifier keys, the keyboard is not very useful for me…

Also, having gotten used to the UHK (Ultimate Hacking Keyboard), I find that the huge space bar is a waste: I only ever hit the space key with the right thumb, and I'd much rather have an entire row of modifiers than a huge spacebar key, which mostly goes unused.

[MivLives]

I'm a bit fan of split space boards as well. Luckily there seems to be some movement to bring that to 65%+ market. I have space and backspace at the bottom of the board, and it saves my pinky a ton of work.