[hhhAndrew]

In 2004 I owned only my laptop, with no full size keyboard -- but the sword fighting minigame really benefits from a numeric keypad. And so I bought a USB numeric keypad, which is an odd little accessory which, every 5 years or so, proves handy for some reason or other.

[mikepurvis]

And here we are in a world where mini and tenkeyless (TKL) keyboards are popular as a way to keep the two hands closer together on a desk.

[Fnoord]

Thing is, the keypad isn't used 24/7 (though it was great for multiplayer on same keyboard), and the mentioned variant is portable. This allows flexility. For example, (assuming right handed mouse here) it can be put on the right side of the mouse instead of the left. Or it could be used on an armchair of a sofa. It is perhaps a cheap one, not caring about dirt or wear, but you could buy a mechanical one or a physically more nice one.

If people can use one Azeron Cyborg with one hand (or two with two hands) as a way against carpal tunnel syndrome then 80% and 60% keyboards are likely just a hack to keep backwards compatibility whereas the better long term solution is likely a proper alternative (with e.g. chording).

That said, I'm happy with my 80% (not with the 60% due to it missing arrow keys which I sometimes use, for example with a shell). But vertical mouse with a lot of buttons are rare (Azeron Cyro is an exception), so for now I'm using a Logitech Vertical MX.

[RankingMember]

They'll have to pry my numpad from my cold dead hands. If you're entering numbers with any regularity there's no comparison.

[mikepurvis]

Oh I'm sure that's true! I've never had to do enough data entry to learn the muscle memory for it, so for people like me it's just perpetually in the way.

I'm rocking an MX Mechanical Mini and I'm overall quite satisfied with it, though it's frustrating that the single-touch switching between multiple paired receivers doesn't take the MX-series mouse with it; this seems like really obvious functionality to have left on the table. At the same time, it doesn't seem like any of the other premium/gaming peripheral makers have tried to integrate anything like this. It's just 1:1 peripheral to receiver dongle, and "get a KVM" if you have more than one device to control.

[bgnn]

Full keyboards with numpad are great but I wish the numpad was on the left side of the keyboard so that it doesn't fall between the alphabetical keys and the mouse (right handed). I always feel my right arm travels unnecessarily long distances to switch between the keyboard and the mouse.

[jghn]

For the original on my PC, I remember finding the sword fighting minigame hard to control. Unless I used a cutlass: the issue I had was in the fine grained control. So I built my sword fighting style around the coarser, heavier damage of the cutlass.