you just got downsized, sucka!

111 comments

Ironically enough, talking about cutting expenses, the keyboard in the photo could easily cost 10 times more than the typical 100% keyboard you'd find in a corporate office.
- Especially when they have luxury of lubed switches, foam, dampeners/stabilizers, custom case material (that keeb def. Custom one).
  
  Don’t forget keycaps! It’s where the real money is lost.
  That set looks like GMK Blue Samurai, which sells new for $150.
  
  I was even thinking just about the case - good CNCd aluminium has come down in price, but it's still expensive. You also have a point, I agree.
- A typical office keeb is around $15. If you can build this for anywhere close to $150 I'm gonna take 2, please!
  
  I wrote "could easily cost 10 times more", which doesn't exclude an even higher price. $100-$150 for just the case (I couldn't find the exact one) is what I'd expect.
  
  They're free with the shit boxes we hand out at work lol.

IVEBEENUSINGTHISKEYBORDFORWHOLEMONTHNDMMOREEFFICIENTTHNIVEEVERBEENBEFORE
- I am pleased that you didn't use A or Z.
  Quality shitpost, sir!
  
  Why would you include both caps lock AND shift but omit A and Z?!

Shift is A, Caps Lock is Z, Control & Backspace is spacebar.
Don't ask me why, I just searched the image and found the reddit thread that this post is riffing from and got my answers
- bruh why would they make spacebar a two key combo. That is literally the most used key
  
  Even though I told you don't ask me why.. you're asking me why. But I'm a good donut so I went back:
  They dont have to press BOTH keys to press space, they just didnt have a spacebar key that is the correct size to fit, so they put those 2 random keys on instead until they get a permanent keycap set that all fits.
  
  Split spacebars are thing mostly because of layouts that won’t support a normal spacebar key. But, since most of these keyboards have user created and designed firmware, one could assign those spacebar keys to do anything.
  I have a few keyboards with split spacebars where the “right” spacebar is normal; it’s just a spacebar but small. The “left” space does dual duty; tap it and it’s a spacebar, hold it down and it becomes a modifier key for a custom layer. Custom layers are used on small keyboards to make the “missing” keys available, sort of like how a phone keyboard has number layer and symbols layer.
  I fully embraced this habit of split spacebars because I cannot train myself to use my left thumb to hit space for the life of me even though I’m a touch typist. Since my right thumb is the only digit hitting space, may as well get some use out of the rest of the space taken up by that spacebar.
  
  They meant to say "Control or* Backspace is Space", right? Right?!
  
  Less used than the Code key apparently. Their editor must crash A LOT if they need a dedicated button to launch it more than A or Space
  
  Uniqueness
- Thank you!

Mechanical keyboard enthusiasts about to spend 1500$ on a keyboard missing over half it's keys

Itrieditandiamnothappythatthereisnospacebaronthatkeyboard.
- You couldn't have written this on that keyboard. That keyboard has no a (or z).
- The central control probably is set to spacebar, i dont think they make small space bars and they already have another control key down the right.
  It does however not have an “a” key, so maybe yours is misconfigured so the control-spacebar is the letter a?
  
  Oh, different keyboard ...

The complete lack of A is concerning.
- Or a space key.
  But you get two Fn keys next to each other, so it's got that going for it.
  
  You have a backspace.
  To do a space you need to press CTRL + Backspace to do a space.
  Duh...
- Outside of work, A was part of a Labor Union, a Marxist gathering and an Anarchist bookclub.
  So he was let go.
  I and N were allowed to stay cause they were the ones who ratted on A.
- I imagine a single press of shift probably types A
  Z on the other hand
  Also why have a caps lock on a keyboard like this the only time I've ever touched it is for keybinds or by accident
- What? Ya can't have access at all that; at what situation can ya fathomly have a want to access that?
  If you ever do need it, just hit the ol' fn+super+shift+q,z
  If you ever need a 'z', just hit fn+alt+Ctrl+backspace.
  Ezpz
  
  You know, I could do without the letter we're referring to here. Plenty of other vowels to suit my needs.
- Can still beat Mario64 on Wii VC version.

A real Geek only need this one
- Oh hey! That's mine :D https://github.com/duckythescientist/BinaryKeyboard
  
  Oh, sorry, I had the image since a lot of years. The world is small
- you got way too many keys you can just type with one button and one button (hold)
  
  That requires more circuitry. Just have the computer check every 0.25s, and if you have depressed the button it is a 1, else a 0.
  
  It's for more confort
- 01101001 00100000 01110100 01111001 01110000 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101011 01100101 01111001 01100010 01101111 01100001 01110010 01100100 00100001
  
  01101001 00100000 01110100 01111001 01110000 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101011 01100101 01111001 01100010 01101111 01100001 01110010 01100100 00100001
  01001110 01101111 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100010 01101100 01100101 01101101 00101100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100101 01100001 01110011 01111001

Two Alt keys and no space bar?

At least you still can press Alt+F4
- You can remap it to require less finger gymnastics... I prefer super+q, personally.

But wait!
This keyboard has 45 keys and not 100 like most normal keyboards, so they cut 55%!
- Normal is 104/105. So 57%.

I want a keyboard that is just one main key with 100 or so modifier keys surrounding it.
- Let's embrace that stenotype life.

No Z key ?
- You've got an 'S' key, so that's enough.
  
  Perfect for ordering some pissa
- Alphabet didn't turn enough profit this quarter, so they had to make some difficult choices and cut their less used options
- It's the one labelled 'caps-lock'. Probably needs a key combo to actually toggle caps-lock.
  Similarly the left 'shift' is also the 'a' key. I would guess tap for 'a', hold for 'shift'.

Can someone explain why this would be even slightly useful to anyone?
How does one type without a and z?
- this is a fancy mechanical keyboard and can be programmed. The missing keys are typed using key combinations.
  In general I love the reprogrammability of mech keyboards, but this one is fucking weird ngl
- The left Shift is A, and Caps Lock is Z.
  To get those keys to function as Shift/Caps you would need to hold down the Fn key (bottom right).
  I’m all for minimalist keyboards, but this shit is a bit too ridiculous.
- it is possible if you get enough time to think of every word, you just need to to find synonims so you don't write specific letters, often needing to switch both words/speech style
  (it's very difficult though, I've been writing this comment for 5 to 10 minutes)
- You cn totlly get by without them
  
  Definitely unneeded. The ending letter of the series of letters we employ to form words is especially useless, but to be honest the first is mostly superfluous too
- Like this.
  
  roasted

That is the worst keyboard layout i have ever seen. Bravo.

Managers will still expect you to do 60% of your work on 60% of your keyboard.

FN key on quadruple duty

literally 40 keys AND YOU STILL INCLUDE THE USELESS CAPS LOCK KEY
- Mmmmmm delicious irony.

I SO hate the CapsLock, the most useless key in the best of locations. I converted it to XCape on all my keebs!
- Usually on boards like this it's remapped to Ctrl, Esc or whatever you actually want. At this point having the caps button still there is purely cosmetic.

As someone that into mech keyboard hobby, I can say that's still perceivable for average user as you still retain the familiar "qwerty" layout.
Look up stenograph keyboard. They have lesser keys but allows someone to write higher wpm and programmable though I don't think they would fit for average office workload (unless you types a lot).