Hardware sucks, but their manufacturers too.

A while back, I needed to do something with a mainboard made by Intel. The mainboard doesn't have a PS/2 connector; so I had to use a USB keyboard. In itself, this is horrible; USB is an incredibly bad interface to connect a keyboard to, IMO. But, well, sometimes the decision isn't yours, you know. Bad Intel.

Given my above-stated opinion on USB, I guess it's not surprising that I don't have a USB keyboard; I don't believe in them. But, well, a mainboard without a PS/2 connector doesn't suddenly get one because I look at it, so I went to a nearby computer shop with the intention to buy me a keyboard.

While it's bad enough that I had to get me a USB keyboard, they managed to make things worse. The particular model that I'd bought is broken in ... well, let me count the ways.

  1. Blue LEDs are annoying. Yes, a keyboard needs LEDs to show that num lock (etc) are enabled, but a yellow LED works too, and is far less flashy or distracting.
  2. A "Fn" key is nice if you want to overload keys on your keyboard. However, if there is not a single key on your keyboard that is overloaded using the Fn key, then you're silly.
  3. The particular model used a "condensed" layout, rather than the standard 105-key be azerty layout. I'm used to the standard 105-key keyboard layout, and having to type on one that is different is no fun. When I mentioned this to the salesguy, he told me that I'd "get used to this pretty quickly". Well, perhaps if that were my only keyboard. But I also have my home desktop (standard 105-key layout), my laptop (apple azerty laptop layout), some m68k macs (mac azerty 105-key layout), and some more; then, it doesn't get so easy.
  4. They keys on the keyboard were flat as on a laptop keyboard, rather than thick as on a desktop. This makes it harder to disassemble when it gets dirty, with the risk of breaking it (I've had to have my laptop's keyboard replaced when I broke it by disassembling it because the keys started to get stuck and I wanted to clean it...)

Now obviously it's possible to fix most of these issues by simply buying a decent keyboard—except that the shops that I went to simply don't have a decent keyboard anymore these days. At least this one still had 105 keys; for reasons that totally escape me, some keyboard manufacturers today seem to think it's a good idea to drop the insert key on their keyboards. WTF?

People just don't make decent quality keyboards anymore these days...

Bad hardware manufacturers. Bad, bad, bad!