Re: Laptop recommendations?

M. Warner Losh wrote:

>In message: <86fz5341hh.fsf_at_kamino.rfc1149.org>
>            Arne Schwabe <arne_at_rfc2549.org> writes:
>: Sean McNeil <sean_at_mcneil.com> writes:
>: 
>: 
>: >> Yeah, I'm an old weirdo [who also uses emacs a lot].  I grew up with
>: >> the control key being that big sucker just to the left of the 'A' key,
>: >> and reaching down and under to the bottom row bothers my left
>: >> wrist/hand.  I'm otherwise keyboard agnostic (I don't care where the
>: >> esc key is, I just use ctrl-[ and I'm used to figuring out just what
>: >> the BS/Del key sends) but the ctrl key is important.  Fortunately, on
>: >> PC hardware, it's easy enough to get it where i want/like/need it.
>: >
>: > I see what you mean.  But they moved that a long time ago.  I'm amazed
>: > you have managed to stick with the old positioning.  The feel of a
>: > Logitech keyboard is pretty sweet.
>: 
>: Hey, you can still buy a Sun Type 6 USB Keyboard with UNIX Layout
>: (note US Layout is different from UNIX Layout), where escape,
>: backspace and control have strange locations :)
>
>Happy Hacking Keyboard is to die for.  It is the one true keyboard
>layout and all this PC, Johnny-come-lately crowd who F*D up a
>perfectly good keyboard layout can rot in h*** for all I care.  The
>USB version even has two additional USB slots: mouse and memory card
>or cell phone work well there :-).
>
>Of course, the HHK is just a Sun Type 3 keyboard, with an inverted T
>arrows added.  Sweet feedback on the keys, and really worth the price
>of a ticket to Japan to pick it up at PlatHome in Akihabara :-).
>  
>
Isn't the inverted T an optional feature on that keyboard?  I know I've 
seen them without any arrow keys at all (which would drive me insane 
since the arrow keys are the primary way I access previous-element 
buffers in gnugettext apps and on the command line.

I do like how they dump capslock for control.  The only thing I use 
capslock for is to see if I still have keyboard interrupts when my 
system appears to hang. 

It's also annoying that (at least with the one I tried) the Delete key 
was mapped to "forward delete" and you had to hit this awkward 
function-delete combo to get backspace.  I also hit esc a lot when going 
for ` or ~ characters.  It's definatly a keyboard you need to get used 
to (probably not the keyboard for someone who has to switch between 
keyboards a lot).

Personally, I decided to go without the HHK for the same reason I gave 
up learning Dvorak.  It works fine at home but I can't spend time 
reconfiguring the keyboard at every machine I sit down at and my fingers 
get confused.  Heck, I can't even stand those keyboards that grow the 
"enter" key to suck up the backslash key and cut the backspace (or 
shift) key in half to fit in the backslah key.  There's little worse 
than getting to the 80 character mark on a shell command and 
accidentally hitting enter instead of backslash enter and getting a ton 
of garbage on the screen (which usually whacks the terminal to boot).