Oh my god...is that a 15" laptop without a number pad being crammed onto the side of the keyboard, thus not forcing all my typing to be awkwardly offset and uncomfortable?
While a personally agree with you thoroughly, this weekend I learned that Thai people love number pads because the language has too many characters and it's own numerals, yet most of the time people use/prefer Arabic numerals, so with a number pad they have access to the numbers without having to swap keyboard layouts to English just for numerals.
It's the same with the French, every French person I know is using the number pad a lot when typing on a French layout. The reason being that in the usual top row you have the accented characters and for numbers you have to press shift, so it's easier to use the number pad. As a side note the French keyboard layout is one of the worst to use if you are not French. Typing your password at an Internet cafe can be a real pain.
In Polish we have 9 such characters and most people use just so called "programmers keyboard layout" which uses left-alt + letter to do the accent.
E.g. alt + e = ę, alt + l = ł (with a one case where we have two different accents for a single letter: z, so we use alt+z = ż and alt+x = ź, the second letter is less commonly used then the first one)
20-30 years ago there were some strange keyboard layouts that didn't use alt, but hopefully they were forgotten.
Before 90s "Polish typist's layout" was more popular, it was based on QWERTZ and had the <>?/[]();: signs moved out of the way to put Polish letters there.
All typing machines used it, but it was awful for programming obviously, so the "Polish programmer's layout" was added, and because it was exactly the same as standard american QWERTY (except for Left Alt + some letters) it won almost overnight.
Windows still shipped with both layouts enabled for Polish locale for decades, and nobody used the typis one, but there was a shortcut that changed between them.
When you accidentally used that shortcut - if you had Y or Z or Polish letters in your password - you couldn't log in (because you typed "yeti" but got "zeti" but it still looked like * * * * :) )
I think there must have been millions of USD lost on support calls because of that little shortcut :)
I think a misunderstanding occured here: AltGr is actually the right Alt key. The left one is the regular Alt.
If I remember correctly shortcuts to change layout/language are by default Ctrl+Shift and Alt+Shift respectively (correct me if I'm wrong). These are incredibly annoying, especially in some games.
Luckily though you can disable them from the settings. Instead there's Win+Space, which is a Godsend and should've always been the only default.
Fun fact: on Windows Polish programmer's keyboard you can use the Tilde key (Shift+Grave) to input Polish characters as well, e.g. press Shift+Grave (it won't put in any symbol at this point), release and then press 's' to input 'ś'. However it makes it problematic to input the tilde symbol itself, so I've modified my layout with the MS Keyboard Layout Creator to get rid of that functionality/flaw (aside from other minor improvements)
https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=22339
Right, it's the right alt, not left:) It's muscle memory to the point I had to check myself doing it to be sure :)
The shortcut to change was definitely something with Ctrl and Shift because I remember accidently switching layout when I was selecting text by whole words with Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right.
Tilde works funny on linux - it makes alternative version of every letter, not only from the current locale. I was accused of being a Russian pretending to be Polish on some Polish forum long ago because I wrote something with a Greek (or cyrylic?) letter by accident because I did something with home directory in the background and only pressed ~ once instead of twice :)
On the AZERTY keyboard there's éèàç (I know ç is not technically an accent) and the circonflexe and tréma accents as dead keys. This is apparently enough to cause massive confusion on QWERTY keyboards and for everyone to accept discarding accents on uppercase letters (ÉÀÇ). Also it's apparently advantageous enough to accept pushing []{} to silly alt combinations.
Some people move to BÉPO or something like that, I use QWERTY with Xcompose.
In Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (Latin) we have č ć š đ ž, but we've just repurposed extra keys from English characters (to the right of l and p).
We've retained x y q (no purpose in our alphabet), making it quite convenient to just type using the native keyboard layout, regardless if I'm writing in my native language or in English.
but that's enough to want accents and symbols on the number row by default (&é"'(-è_çà) and numbers when pressing shift.
I think that's the reason that bépo (a French variant of dvorak which allows easy access of both common accentuated keys and numbers) is more popular among French speakers than dvorak is for English speakers, proportionally.
My father still uses the alt-less layout. I can only navigate it because my first steps in typing were done on a mechanical typewriter, which this layout tries to emulate.
Even then, plenty french programmers use a qwerty layout of some sort. I saw people using the Canadian layout, and the international layout is I think the most efficient for IT stuff, even if it requires getting used to composing accentuated characters.
THIS. Is so ลำบาก[^1]. I tend to use my iPhone/iPad to type certain kinds of stuff because of the dedicated "123" modifier.
[^1]: Completely off topic, but I love when there are words that capture a feeling in one language for which there isn't a suitable analogue in another. For non-Thai speakers, this word means burdensome, but depending on context covers the whole span of "inconvenient" to "distressing". In general, though, I find English has more individual words that express an entire concept vs. Thai which has to use compound words to explain its meaning.
Since you are being offtopic, I'm joining you. As someone that isn't Thai, living in Europe but does like the country/people and is trying to learn some Thai, it is always great fun to randomly see Thai words somewhere so I can try to see if I can pronounce the word already. Sadly enough, I wasn't able to haha
I've learned from Thai speakers that there are multiple words that mean multiple things depending on the context. Where as English (and Dutch) do have this sometimes, but less often than Thai words. I am pretty sure (but correct me if I'm wrong) that both Chinese, Japanese and Korean have this too.
Dutch also has some interesting words that cannot be directly translated to English. In Dutch we don't have 'siblings', we have 'broers en zussen' where 'broers' are your brothers and 'sisters' are your sisters. There is no word that we use for both of them. Same with the word 'gezin', it means the family you are living with.
Another one is 'giftig' which has 2 english words too. Poisonous and venomous, but in Dutch it is the same thing.
I actually didn't know this word either, so it was good vocab. Thai's abugida is pretty complicated, but once you memorize the rules, there's not too many spelling exceptions, and a lot of words are pronounced about as as you'd expect.
If you're looking for something more phonetic possible as a stepping stone, Lao, despite having less content to consume, is much, much easier to learn where the abugidas look about the same if you squint; you could look at Lao as simplified Thai (with a 6th tone). Lao had a spelling reform recently that dropped all the duplicate letters for Pali/Sanskrit words, there's no implied vowel (and they change form less), there's no การันต์ (◌์), and the final consonants are normalized to the sound it makes. Lao and Thai are asymmetrically intelligible where Lao people understand Thai but not the other way around. That said, the Northeastern Thai dialect, อีสาน, is almost identical with small dialectal differences. Grammatically they are the same so anything you learn in one will almost certainly transfer to the other with just a different vocabulary set for common words (to do, to work, I, you, man, woman, etc.).
It's so great to see people learning Thai! For both you and parent, if you haven't found this already, this website does a good job of giving accurate English definitions for Thai words, along with sample sentences from Thai sources: http://thai-language.com/id/133751 (this is the entry for 'ลำบาก') There's also a mobile app, which is even easier to use than the site.
That site really IS pretty good. I've always appreciated studying a dialectal difference before traveling to different regions in Thailand -- in my experience the locals will treat you better if you can not only speak Bangkok Thai, but put in the effort to learn some of their vocabulary. Getting non-tourist treatment is exactly what I'm looking for when trying to learn about a new area.
Blender works fine on a powerful laptop. The only problem is that if you want to do cycles renderings (the raytraced, "realistic" rendering mode) you would have to run it essentially overnight, or longer to render your scene.
Model building, texturing, animation, basically everything else blender does should work just fine
Even on normal keyboards I don't use it, and they are annoying because they make the mouse position awkwardly more to the right than it should be healthy for the arm (I really envy left handed people, they don't have to deal with this).
And it is next to impossible to get a keyboard without the numpad, fortunately I found two such keyboards and I have one at work and one at home (Logitech K310 and Microsoft Sculpt).
And I haven't seen in live any person that uses numpad, I always thought it is used by accountants only (and those that don't want to use two hands to enter numbers).
FYI: Keyboards without the numpad block are called "TenKeyLess Keyboards" (sometimes it is abbreviated to TKL acronym) or 87/80% keyboards.
In short research, I found they are hundreds of them available on Amazon, Aliexpress. However, most of them have mechanical switches[0][1], some of them have conducted switches (like Topre[2]) and it is very rarely to see cheap, typical office-use TKL keyboards made by companies like Microsoft or Logitech but Matias have at least sell one model [3].
It might be handy to read a short guide [4] of keyboard naming by their sizes, whether you will look for new keyboard in future.
Also, numerical operations / form filling while consuming liquid or holding a pet. It's surprising the number of times the ability to perform even a subset of tasks while not having both hands to dedicate has allowed me to maintain focus and interest instead of stopping dead and having to spool back up slowly.
> Because that's where it should always be.
I must admit, I have yet to figure out how to maintain this discipline while whiteboarding, let alone walking, or sleeping.
Going from qwerty to number pad is a context switch. Once you've paid the price for the switch your middle finger rests above the 5, and you can quickly enter numeric information.
Numbers on the top of qwerty are good for incidental numbers when entering text, but around 5 consecutive digits is enough for me to move.
Are they useful enough to add to a laptop keyboard? Probably not.
It still amazes me why so many people like mechanical keyboards, I hate them because they are loud and require much more key travel to type - and that slows me down a lot.
I only use keyboards that have low-key travel and are silent - basically anything that resembles laptop keyboard.
EDIT: Sorry for sounding a bit harsh, but keyboard-without-numpad != mechanical keyboard, which are quite niche, I wasn't aware that a niche product has a also niche variation - lack of numpad :)
Try looking into the "silent" keyswitch variations, e.g. Cherry MX Silent Reds.
The strength of the mechanical market, the reason why it's getting bigger, is not that it's mechanical and "clicky"(that's the stereotype), but that it's customizable. All of it. Case, PCB, keyswitches, keycaps, stabilizers. If you don't like the switches stock, they can be relubricated and modded with rubber O-rings. If you want a dampened response the stabilizers and keycaps can be heavier. The hobby has developed from that over the last decade - being able to take the platform and "own" it.
Yes, you can get a low-profile scissor switch design and it'll be quiet and function for years. But it will also be unmaintainable and resist even basic cleaning.
The trick is, on a scissor switch (or butterfly) keyboard the key travel is so short there is no really hitting bottom. Yes, from a mech keyboard perspective you "hit bottom" every time, but I find it a superior typing experience over trying to catch that halfway point when the key is actuated.
I have to say low profile blue switches offer quite a nice typing experience though, quite comparable with scissor switches.
Most laptop keyboard are tenkeyless so that wouldn't make sense. They also listed two discrete/separate keyboards as examples so that further enforces that they were not talking about laptops.
I'm left handed but can only use a mouse right-handed, so I can see how a numpad could be an issue, however;
> And it is next to impossible to get a keyboard without the numpad
Every single keyboard in my home, would like to disagree with you. I have at least a dozen, not one with a numpad.
A lot of them are mechanical, Tenkeyless (TKL) which is my favourite size, and is _literally_ a numpadless form factor.
You might say, that they don't count because they're mechanical, or expensive, or loud, or some other argument, non of which are unavoidable, but, if you want to argue concern about comfort of keyboards and long term use, I think you should seriously consider investing in a half decent mechanical. There are ergonomic form factors, and variety of sizes and key counts from 40% to over 100% (of standard).
You can get a cheap TKL for as little as £30, or hand build one like some of mine for £500-700+ and everything in between.
If you happen to like Thinkpad keyboards, Lenovo on and off sells external USB and bluetooth keyboards with the Thinkpad brand. They feel identical to laptops of the same era when they are manufactured, and they have the same embedded trackpoint and buttons.
I am typing this on an old USB one that greatly resembles the keyboard on an X200 or T400 laptop. This old thing even has the little touchpad from those days and therefore identical palm rest areas. I also have a newer bluetooth unit that is just like my T495, minus the touchpad. I miss the touchpad even though I use the trackpoint for all pointer movement. I like to keep edge-scrolling enabled on the touchpad on my old keyboard as well as on my actual laptop.
One caveat is that the trackpoint acceleration profile seems different for these external devices, so switching back end forth between these and the built-in Thinkpad controls can feel clumsy while your fingers and eyes readjust.
You're welcome. For reference, the noise and travel issues you mention have solutions in mech world, wireless boards exist, althought I don't have any myself so I can't say much on them.
Lookup Vortex brand keyboards. I have a Pok3r which has no numpad and is quite small in footprint but still has a full size layout for letter keys. It is weird at first not having dedicated arrow keys but once you are used to it it's quite comfortable.
I have the Vortex Race 3, which basically is a Pok3r, but with dedicaded arrow keys, F-keys, home/end/pgup/pgdn, and still squeezes all into a very compact form factor. The Pok3r is useless to me, absolutely can't get used to the additional combos required to get to frequently-used keys.
You can learn to left mouse. If your mouse is ambidextrous already, move it over to the left of your keyboard and try it for 30-60 minutes a day for a couple weeks. I like left-mousing at work and right-mousing at home (strange I know), and when I left mouse, I prefer the buttons flipped (index finger always is 'left click', etc).
If your mouse is right-hand specific, try getting a ambidextrous one next time. Most of the ambidextrous mice these days are gaming mice, but they work fine for pushing cursors around too.
I think I pressed a key (any key) on my number pad less than ten times in 6 years. I don't have any use case for a numberpad. Maybe if I still played Nethack.
The offset typing causes repetitive stress injuries which are very painful and can end a career. For people that use mice, one handed trackballs, a one handed touch pad, doubly so on external keyboards because it forces the mouse hand abnormally out and away from the body. All that for a bunch of keys I haven't used in years because they are useless as a programmer.
Laptop manufactures who don't offer keyboards without numpads, to me, care so little about their customers that their laptops aren't worth shit. I'm looking specifically are all laptops > 14" from system 76. If they want to be taken seriously as a manufacturer, they should consider a line of 15" or 16" laptops that aren't going to leave people in pain, considering changing careers. Of course, I only use the internal keyboard when absolutely necessary and can't use an external with an external display, and it still makes that big of a difference.
I'm also a numpad fan, and wouldn't have a keyboard without one.
Aside from making it much faster to enter numbers, I also really like it for gaming - instead of using WASD, I use the numpad 4,8,6,2). This means a whole bunch of other keys are right there for use by the same hand, e.g. 7/9 for jump, "/" for throw, 1 for crouch, 3 for prone etc. I realise this is controversial tho!
They ruined that by adding nvidia. All 15" ones usually do. Precision 7550 is the rare 15" laptop that lets you configure it to your heart's content without nvidia, but it has the numpad.
laptops are very different since they have two gpus, one internal panel, possible external monitors, and any permutation of wiring of gpus to panel/monitors, battery and thermal constraints, screen tearing issues, etc. Stay away.
Because nvidia optimus drivers are not open sourced and a huge PITA in some linux distros/desktop environments who wish to stay as FOSS as possible.
Not a problem on desktops since they don't have optimus but on laptops without a proper optimus implementation for linux you'll end up with your 1660TI or whatever running at full blast with just your terminal opened, killing your battery in no-time and turning your laptop into a frying pan.
That's why linux devs prefer no nvidia dGPUs on their laptops.
I gave my MSI Ghost Pro 4K gaming laptop to my mother to browse the internet and bought an XPS. For her, in windows, it works ok, and if she launches anything that needs the Nvidia card it'll enable/disable as required.
Using that laptop in Linux was the bane of my life, Optimus is hell and if you want to switch between Intel/AMD you need to reboot, no thanks.
You can't use it for VR if you have the type of Optimus I had, where if the display was connected to the Intel rather than to the Nvidia, it wouldn't work. If you left Nvidia on, and tried to use it as a laptop, you'd be lucky to get 20 minutes battery life (not exaggerating), so it was neither great for gaming nor useful for productivity.
There are still many 15" laptops, mainly branded as ultrabooks or similar, that don't have discrete graphics cards. The ThinkPad T15, for instance, although it also has a numpad.
