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by cduzz 857 days ago
I've got a couple M keyboards floating around. I grew up using an IBM PC with the F keyboard; when I got my first computer I got a "focus 2002" keyboard that also had the mechanical (but not BS) keys.

Worked a university and availed myself of their "surplus junk" sales every 2nd tuesday of the month and adopted many a weird piece of hardware, and eventually had a stack of 3 decent M keyboards that I'd rotate through on my various systems.

Decades later, I got tired of the junky dell USB keyboards and tried one out in the WFH days and discovered ... too loud, too big, kinda too annoying.

I did, however, come upon a lexmark M4-1 keyboard, which has been an absolute delight. Good typing feel, has the trackpoint thing in the middle, not too big. Really quite wonderful. I don't even really notice the lack of all the fancy new keys -- I remap the capslock to whatever and it's almost like I'm back on my model f (or old "unix" keyboards of the 90s) with the control key next to the A. It's not the control key -- my muscle memory has firmly moved it to the bottom left / right, but the OS "meta" key kinda serves the same role.

I even got one of the model Ms with the trackpoint in the middle (no, not a black one) -- and I just don't like the feel as much as the m4-1, which the internet says is based on early IBM laptop keyboards.

Too bad the USB/PS2 dongle sometimes drops out and the keyboard reboots and flashes the 3 leds, which is somewhat annoying.

1 comments

I still prefer the F to the M.. however I can't really type of qwerty boards anymore for any length of time without risking RSI. Kinesis Advantage for me for the rest of my life.
+1 to Kinesis Advantage. I prefer the "original" / non-360 for its advantage (sorry) of just working as soon as it's connected to a computer. The 360 needs to pair it's halves that results in a disconnect/reconnect dance which annoys me a lot. I assume it's only due to my setup, where I have two laptops connected by a USB-C to a monitor, all accessories are in turn connected to the monitor.
yeah no, the left/right pairing has been, in the past, kinda wonky. Not a show stopper for me as it only seemed to happen when I turned the board actually off... which is not very often.

Newer versions of the firmware seems to have mostly resolved this. You just need to make sure you turn on the left half slightly before the right half.

Good point - however I only manage to turn them on/off by yanking cables, it's incredibly annoying to do. The on/off switch just changes from wired to wireless and still keeps some connection.