The Value Of A Good Keyboard

I have always enjoyed writing, I may not really have anything to say at times but I have always enjoyed it.  One of the problems I run into when trying to put my ideas into text is that my hands can start to hurt if I am using a poorly designed or cheap keyboard.  That can really hurt your ability to product.  In college I had an NEC computer with the stock keyboard that seemed to be pretty nice, it had a good feel to it and I never really minded typing on it, my next computer was a Dell with a 200Mhz processor and, again, a nice, big, chunky keyboard that had an excellent feel.  Eventually I moved on to laptop computers and, to this day, I still maintain that the keyboard on my HP Pavilion laptop was the most comfortable keyboard I have ever used, I typed countless papers for Political Science and English on it and never once had any type of hand cramps or issues with typing for extended periods of time - occasionally the keyboard would have its issues, half the keys would stop working and I would have to pop the case open and reconnect the keyboard cable to the motherboard, but that was a small price to pay for typing comfort.  In 2004 I had my first experience with a terrible keyboard that actually made it harder for me to get any type of work done.  I bought an eMac from Apple and went with the standard Apple keyboard.  The keys were hard, they didn’t seem to push in correctly, and the keyboard was just an all-around unpleasant thing to use.  I found myself not wanting to type papers or to do any work that required inputting text.  It was so bad that I would actually use my old HP laptop to write and then just transfer the information over to my new Apple for editing or for printing.  I tried different keyboards from third party makers that were designed for Macs, but they also sucked.  In 2006 I picked up a MacBook, with its new style of keyboard, and found it to be relatively comfortable, but still nothing like my old computers, it was still hard to type for long periods of time without getting some sort of fatigue.  For my birthday I decided to try the Logitech Wave keyboard, it had a great feel and it also has a full suite of hot-keys that work on the Mac and on the PC.  Every single hot-key on this keyboard works some function on the Mac, from the calculator key to Front Row to Exposé.  I no longer feel discouraged from typing, I don’t loathe long papers and I don’t have any types of pain or fatigue after a long day of working on the computer.  It is such a great keyboard that I actually take it to work with me now, where I work 10 hour days on an iMac helping people with networking issues.  The only real point to this entire post is this - if you don’t love your keyboard, then get a new one, if you don’t like that one, get a different one until you find one that you love.  You’ll be happy you did.