Discussion What's the worst keyboard you've ever used ?

Exploding PSU

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Jul 17, 2018
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[Moderator edit: Moving thread from Computer Peripherals to Opinions and Experiences. No specific technical problem or question. Discussion.]


I had the unfortunate experience of typing on, what I believe, one of the worst keyboard I've ever used.

A relative of mine asked me to install some programs on his laptop, along with helping him write a couple of documents or two. Usual stuff, really. His laptop is this 14 inch HP Pavilion, I can't remember the exact model, but it's Intel and is reasonably old (Kaby Lake, I think? It's on Windows 10). It looks like one of these (not the exact model as it's a 14 inch, but close)...

UzPFhWM.jpeg



The keyboard... is horrible. Like, it's so bad it forced me to open a new thread here. It's so flimsy, the keys wiggle around like they're not installed correctly, feels like they'll pop out if I look at it the wrong way. It feels cheap and sticky to the touch, sounds cheap, and typing on it... I swear the keys have only like 0.01 mm of travel, they're that bad. It's like typing on an execution bed a wooden table. Or a tablet touchscreen. It was tiring and actually painful after a while.

Usually I'm quite forgiving when it comes to subpar equipment, but this HP keyboard... is an abomination. It was so gross. I have a Thinkpad as my daily (an X1) so I know I'm a bit biased / spoiled here, but in comparison to even HP's own old affordable netbooks (what were they called? HP Stream, I think?), it's positively worse...

The only thing worse than that HP keyboard was this "rollable" keyboard I got as an emergency keyboard years ago, felt like typing on Jello. Lucky it was just that, an emergency keyboard. It looks like this one, only it was in a strange hue of cyan..

51PltImHfxL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg


I've also tried Logitech's Wave Keyboard one time... I'm not a mechanical keyboard kind of guy so I thought it would be the keyboard for me, an ergonomic keyboard that's "healthy" and all that. It was not comfortable, at least for me. It was strangely angled...

71WHOr-BxIL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg


I'm not here to bash on HP, I'm sure the newer ones are better and the issues of that particular one I used probably had something to do with it's age, but this got me wondering..

What's the worst keyboard you've ever used?
 
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The worst keyboard I ever used wasn't even a PC keyboard, it was the keyboard for the old IBM 3270 "tank" terminal. The terminal was called a tank because it was built like one, heavy and possibly bulletproof😉. To touch type on that keyboard was a workout for your fingers.