Simple Pleasures – Yeah, That’s the Ticket!

I’ve been changing a few things around lately, as I seek to improve my productivity and reduce the time I spend doing many things. It is a simple case of having too much to accomplish, and not enough time.

I’ve been renovating a laptop computer, a ‘gift’ from a customer who did not want to spend the time and money to repair it, after his son had been less than cautious and made the hard drive unusable through rough handling. He had already paid another consultant to announce that the drive had an unremovable virus.

I thought that was really cute.

After replacing the hard drive of this machine with a purchase from a friend of my son’s parted out machine, I am on my way toward having a really fine working laptop; after replacing the 2 sticks of 256MB with 2 sticks of 1GB.  So, next I could replace the DVD-CD/RW with a DVD-RW with LightScribe, and the (de)Celeron M 1.5 with a Pentium M 2.0, which would be much faster, and, because the Pentium has speed-step technology, make the battery life longer.

It has become a path to somewhere, but where, I don’t know. There’s one thing I have found out, which is actually something I forgot. In doing the install of the operating system, and the other programs, I decided that the laptop keyboard was a real pain, and hooked up an older IBM model M keyboard to it, by means of an adapter.

I haven’t enjoyed typing this much in ages. I also haven’t been as productive either, as I am having to go back and change things (typos) far less frequently. The buckling spring keyboard is something that makes me (and everyone, I’ve gathered from doing some research) a better typist. It makes my sometimes slightly offset key presses no problem. In the course of looking around, I also see claims that the buckling spring keyboards produce fewer problems with Repetitive Stress Injuries.

As much as this is helping, I find that not having a Windows key is beginning to be a possible problem, as I have gotten used to having it. (This is also one of the reasons I have stopped using my Northgate Omnikey keyboards, no Windows key, but otherwise, the best keyboards ever made).

So, instead of purchasing another internal piece of hardware for my main machine, such as a larger hard drive, or a faster video card, I’m going to be buying a Das Keyboard.

Love at first sight! the surface is silky smooth, and shiny – not great for fingerprints, but you can’t have everything.

The Das Keyboard, in case you don’t know, is an updated AT style keyboard, with buckling spring technology, and the switches, though like the original Alps switches in the IBM Model M, have gold plated contacts, and should therefore  be immune to corrosion problems. The Das has no extra keys, so media control, or macro functions are not possible, but it does include a 2 port USB 2.0 hub, making it nicer than the Dell media board I have.

The IBM Model M I’m currently using was made in 1983 (and is still going strong), so if the Das Keyboard lasts at least 26 years, it will be just great.

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