Seeing the @frameworkcomputer laptop in person, It is a very well built machine.
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Seeing the @frameworkcomputer laptop in person, It is a very well built machine. It is *almost* perfect. Sadly, the keyboard just is not good enough. There's just too much wrong with it for my general use of a computer.
It feels like the keyboard was laid out by a graphic designer to *look neat*. That's completely unimportant to me. I want it to *work well*.
If I could make a couple of changes, I would do these (in order of importance)
1) add physical, seperate PgUp/PgDown buttons (look at thinkpads for how that's done)
2) Take the arrow keys and extend them slightly to the bottom (again: look at thinkpads!) this has multiple benefits: the individual keys can obviously be larger. But more importantly, you now have a landmark you can easily find with your thumb without looking down. You now know exactly where the arrow keys are and where the right Ctrl key is. Yes, this is important for me.
3) Group the F-Keys - regular groups of four keys with an ever-so-slight gap between them.
4) I find the flat keys extremely irritating. I might get used to them, but I actually don't want to. On a slightly curved key, I know instinctively where I am on any given key. My fingers auto-center. I find typing on flat keys weird, mostly because I tend to hit keys off-center more often.
5) Physical Pos1/End keys would be nice.
6) I take screenshots all the time (I create a lot of instructions for work), so a dedicated PrtScr button would be nice, but I could get used to Fn+PrtScr. Yes, I use FnLock, why do you ask? I need F keys more often than media keys. The FnLock works well, don't change it
I want to stress that the rest of the laptop is *excellent* and I'm actually sad that I will be returning mine. I also thought about performing a thinkpad keyboard mod, but I just need a working laptop *now*.
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@claudius @frameworkcomputer coming from a ThinkPad I do to miss some of the physical buttons that you mention, mainly the Home and End keys, Print Screen would be nice too. If new input covers with a layout more akin to the ThinkPad are going to be offered in the future I'll likely upgrade.
Typing comfort wise, the keyboard feels fine to me though. I find my Framework more comfortable to type on than my Logitech MX keyboard.
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@Dany @claudius @frameworkcomputer Having to hit a key combination for Home/End is a bit difficult for me too. I do a lot of programming and editing where I need to skip words or to the end of the line.
The keyboard on my Acer is more annoying though with the Home button right next to the Del button - I constantly skip home instead of deleting.
