Sometimes I Hate Being A Geek: The Keyboard Issues

After a couple of rather painful decision-making processes, I ended up with the conclusion that I’ll get myself a Mac Mini this autumn. The event will happen in about a month, and I already have some of the money I need.

Why I ended up going for the Mac Mini instead of a MacBook is another story (price was not a factor in this case). Why I hate being a geek right now is this post’s subject.

I’ve had a lot of keyboards over the years. Actually, I kind of destroy keyboards, mainly because I hate using my mouse too much, not to mention being into both writing and programming. My first keyboard managed to take about two or three years of abuse. It was a regular, China-made, nameless keyboard which I still have because it essentially works, save for the left Ctrl (emacs biatch here) and the backspace key. It was replaced by a monster-sized keyboard which waked all my neighbors when I used it — but surprisingly enough, it still works, after about three years of abuse from myself and four other years of abuse from my father.

Right now, I’m typing from a black Logitech keyboard with a bunch of multimedia keys I don’t use (I’m just too lazy to make them work with X11). It (still!) works without any signs of significant damage, and I think it’s about the best keyboard I had, but the keys are a bit too strong and it makes noise. So the geek in me decided to change it.

Okay, so the problem is that I don’t know what to change it with. I realize most people don’t care about their keyboards, but hell, I do.

So the best bet is Apple’s keyboard, right? Not exactly. For one thing, I absolutely love the aluminum, flat look. The problem is: I don’t want a wireless keyboard (I’ve been through the wonderful event of my keyboard’s batteries failing at 3 AM with no batteries in the house and a deadline in the morning) — but I like the wireless version’s form factor. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, Apple isn’t offering a wired keyboard with the wireless one’s form factor.

On the other hand, I want an Apple keyboard — that is, one without the annoying Windows logo and one that has precisely seven special keys on the bottom row — the space bar and the pairs of Control, Option and Command. So I don’t want even something as cool as the Plycon keyboard.

To make the matter even more annoying, I like the feeling of the old Apple keyboard — the TactilePro if I remember correctly — the only thing I wish for it was a smaller for factor. I rarely use my keypad anyway.

There are a couple of alternative Apple keyboard — but none of them ship to Romania, and I doubt I’d trust the Romanian postal services anyhow.

So I guess I have about one month to decide what the heck I’ll be using to type things on my new Mac Mini. Sometimes I just hate the geek inside me :-).