Came up with this late at night. Not while being anywhere near a laptop though.
I used to think this way as I’ve been able to touch type for a very long time but in total darkness it’s very nice to be able to find a key/orient things.
I touch type too, but I’ll be damned if I can find the right F key without looking
Where should the right F key be? Mine only has a left F.
Get out!
It’s found in the top middle right on Dvorak
Your keyboard should have two nubbins on it so you can easily find the F key without looking (it puts your hands in the home row). If your keyboard doesn’t have these, then either it’s 100 years old and someone is typing with the force of a gorilla, or you have an extremely strange keyboard.
The real tricky part are the less used symbol keys.
I think he is talking about function key, F1 to f12 ;)
Lol I’m dumb
Happens to the best ^^
It is nice for the less used keys. For orientation there is this thing in the middle of some keyboards.
Lighting is also helpful in finding the keyboard.
You probably shouldn’t be on the computer in total darkness
My eyes hurt just thinking about it.
total darkness isn’t so good tho.
dim indirect light from behind the screen is best IMO and that’s also enough to find that rare key, as well as your drink without knocking it over and causing havoc.
I don’t care for the RGB in itself I like the backlight so it’s easier to see the keys in the dark
I’ve tilted my screen down to try to illuminate the keyboard too many times
DJs, Astronomers, lightning technicians at venues, dark scientists etc, so many people require a backlit keyboard for hobby or work
Radiologist checking in.
But … sometimes it’s dark
Then turn on a light
The light in my keyboard?
Desktop: don’t care, keyboard is standardised
Laptop: less-used keys can be different sized or in different positions. I want that shit backlit so I can find where they’ve shifted those keys to
Many laptops are made with the US ANSI layout and other layouts like UK ISO are either shoehorned in at the final design stage or relegated to shuffling symbols around and requiring both Fn+Shift to type a character that used to have its own damn key. I’m not salty.
I like to see them in the dark
OP is the guy on the left but thinks they’re the guy on the right.
I genuinely don’t get the love for RGB things.
I don’t know why people like them, why they always have those weird cycle modes, and a lot of them flicker or actually cycle at a fairly slow rate which is distracting.
I can see my keyboard at night, and the keys get buffs based on the color.
I don’t know that the high prevalence of RGB items on the market necessarily reflects a love for it. I think it just means it’s cheap to produce and can be marketed as an extra feature.
GN recently mentioned that apparently there’s a demand for water costs with screens on them (even tho they cost more) so manufacturers are making more such models. Extrapolate to rgb
I would genuinely pay more if I could get high quality hardware that wasn’t infected with rainbow RGB nonsense.
Most RGB peripherals I’ve owned I was able to toggle completely off.
I’m also not an RGB enjoyer, I usually just set it all to the same static color, on the lowest dimness.
White
I’m a soft, light lavender RGB on white peripherals kind of guy.
Purple here for a while now. Maybe it’s time for a change.
Lavender is nice too!
Yes, you can turn them all off…
…if you install 3 different resource-hogging, data-harvesting RGB lighting control programs on your PC and have them run at startup.
I’m not that pissed off about RGB. But it should be off by default.
White by default would be ok in theory, but in reality they all vary in brightness and colour temperature, so that looks jarring too.
E: lmao ok people, simp for the corporations
I don’t need rainbow rgb, but a nice, dim, through key white backlight is very valuable on a laptop that’s used regularly
Thats silly too. Just turn off the rgb feature. I built a new pc last year, it has plenty of parts that could do the disco lighting but I turned it off on most of them, and opted for a static white glow on the keyboard. Completely fine this way
The problem is that each part manufacturer wants you to install their shitty RGB control software that is often bizarrely resource-hogging, and sometimes even used for data gathering.
On laptops, some RGB control software can eat your battery away by a fair bit because the CPU never goes into a lower power state.
RBG should A) all conform to a standardised open API, and B) be off by default.
Ditto. Unfortunately the grown up stuff is either worse quality business class hardware or ridiculously expensive boutique stuff. If you’re just looking for a case though, Phanteks makes great, mature builds
Is “business class” just a simile here? Because normally, the hardware sold to businesses is of a better quality (albeit also expensive).
Maybe I’m just making a wrong differentiation between what I’d call business class and what I’d call enterprise class. In my comment, I was specifically picturing those garbage soft click keyboards that ship with Dell, HP, etc. Desktops
Ah right, yeah, those are crap. I really don’t get why companies are willing to cheap out specifically with keyboards.
Like, it’s the tool your workers use all day. Even if they just type 5% faster on a proper keyboard, that pays for itself in no time.
I browse the web at night, I want to see what I type. It’s as simple as that!
Or just learn to type without looking
All the cool kids use the lamp
This is some Gameboy brick edition attachment level. Just needs the magnifier screen to slide over it.
If i need backlit keys to see what I’m typing then the room is also too dark to be looking at a screen. Look after your eyes guys.
Why would I need letters at all?
Another Infinity Ergodox run needs to happen.
YES. I would order ~3 more just for redundancy. If this one breaks, I dont know what I’m going to do.
I’d almost have to one-off a few custom pcbs and laser cut everything myself.
I don’t need to look at the most common keys or the letters; but some of the weirder ones I don’t use often, I might have to actually look at the board for. Having them backlit helps see when it’s dark. 🤷🏻♂️
My keyboard does not require backlit keys because I am a power user.
I look at my keys when I type and I’m not ashamed of that. I always have, since Oregon trails on 5.25 floppy in the early 90s.
I could probably train myself out of it, and I can type whole sentences without looking, but only with the 6 fingers I normally use, rather than the full 8 most people use, and it’s a fucking chore. But frankly it seems like a massive waste of mental resources to learn to type without looking, and I actively resisted learning it in typing classes in middle/highschool. I’m not doing data entry, so whatever I’m writing is a creative process, and that benefits from sight. I get eyes on what I’m doing while I’m doing it, and again when I check it over.
Yes I fucking want backlit keys. Even if just for when I’m laying in bed at a weird angle and can’t see the key layout, or sitting in a dark room. I would want them in a drunken stupor, too, even tho I use my phone for that browsing, which is backlit by default.
In summary, backlit keys are the shit. I spent a gob of money on a backlit, rechargeable, wireless keyboard, and I regret nothing.
