hawkida: (Default)
Max Harden ([personal profile] hawkida) wrote2002-03-12 07:27 pm
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Keyboard observation

With Gavin's talk of his dying keyboards I've just examined my own. The keys are wearing away. There are slash marks across them where the years have seen my fingernails strike down so often they're leaving marks. The worst damaged keys are:

E - understandable. Most used letter in English.
A - understandable again. A vowel and a home key.
S - again - a commonly used letter and a home key.
N - Huh?!?

On the right hand side of the keyboard the only keys to suffer this fate are the full stop and the letter N. Why the letter N? I don't type that many words with Ns in them. It's not a home key. I don't have to pass it on the way to the space bar or anything. I really don't understand this.

Beyond the scrape marks (and I just noticed that the letter I has been affected slightly) there's the issue of the letters wearing off the tops. This doesn't matter as I touch type but I've lost the N, most of the M and the O. D is half there and H is fading. Despite the slashes A is mostly there, as is E. The numbers are fine and the F keys across the top of the board are used so rarely they have a layer of dust across them.

And this concludes Keyboard 101. Discuss.