Other What keyboard do you use?

[eyoungren]

So, with my journey to bring light to my keyboard, I was poking around eBay tonight for backlit KBs. MacAlly seems to have made quite a few, but not any my wallet is really in love with. That had me wondering though.

I know there's been many discussions of the keyboards we use here in other threads and if you know me you know that my preference is for the M7803 which came with the 2000 and later PowerMac G4s. That is the primary keyboard I use with my M2 Mac and with my 2009 Mac Pro. I own at least five.

But, I also own a few other different ones. There are at least two of the white ones (A1048) that came with the G5s. Between them, they have a couple of non-working keys. I also have one of the old beige Apple Extended keyboards.

Here are the wireless keyboards I use with my Mac Minis and my 2008 MBP. The L09 Mini gets the Magic Trackpad. They are here because being in my garage, batteries and 110º plus heat from the Arizona summer don't go together well. And the Minis are off anyway right now.



And tonight I decided to pull out the old Apple USB keyboard which predates the M7803. This keyboard I primarily use for testing new Macs. It has a really long cord which makes that useful and considering I'm testing, the little chiclet arrow keys and F keys don't bother me as much as they would if I was using it as a primary keyboard.



I figured, why not connect it to the 2011 MBA. 🤷‍♂️ Since I'm using the MBA to test other computers and do maintenance and stuff. Still works, minus the power key though.

 

[MBAir2010]

The Satechi BT keyboard is very good, has a nice typing experience, stylisg,
backlit, 3 mac-ipad options and internal battery.
there is a delay of 5 seconds to connects to the mac mini which i forget.

but these  BT keyboards from the Late SJobs Empire seem to be better performance and long battery life
but no backlit and needs 2AA batteries that seems to last over a month or more,
100% for the June 28th install on the keyboard and %82 for the trackpad.

I need to get rechargeable batteries this month for both keyboard and track pad.
the track pad seems to use more battery, so i swapped them Saturday.

 

[DCBassman]

Microsoft Wireless Keyboard 800 on the Windows box. If that annoys me, an older Microsoft PS/2 keyboard.
The iMac has a Magic Keyboard 2. The Magic Keyboard A1314 (2xAA) will be sold with the Mac Mini.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

For my Quicksilver I am currently using a wired usb-a Demon King with blue switches & some goofy-cool gradient key caps.

On my a1117 PMG5 I use an Apple wireless A1116.

My w11 thinkpad work laptop, I have docked into two monitors wireless mouse and the keyboard I use is an old Microsoft Wireless Keyboard v2.0.

For my gaming w11 box, I use a usb-c/wireless KLIM Chroma RGB keyboard. A Father’s Day gift from the Mrs

And for my garage Mac cMP 1,1 I use a wired usb-a Microsoft Office keyboard RT9450.

I have many other KBs that occasionally make it in the rotation. I am a big fan of the original wired usb-a aluminum extended chicklet keyboards and the shortened wireless versions. That in combination with Magic Trackpad seated in my henge Clique dock is pretty fantastic as well. My wife uses that so will get a shot of that later on.

 

[eyoungren]

View attachment 2403524
On my a1117 PMG5 I use an Apple wireless A1116.

The G5 my boss bought in 2005 came with the wired version of this keyboard. I claimed it at some point because that keyboard and I pushed out A LOT of newspaper publications. So much so that there are grooves and dents from my fingers and fingernails in the CMD key, SHIFT key and the spacebar.

Although I didn't care for the fact that these are wide open DNA/Food collectors they are solid with the keys. The only reason I don't use BT versions of keyboards is because I think I'd go through a lot of batteries considering I leave stuff on and spend many hours at the computer.

PC keyboards you show are nice too.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

The G5 my boss bought in 2005 came with the wired version of this keyboard. I claimed it at some point because that keyboard and I pushed out A LOT of newspaper publications. So much so that there are grooves and dents from my fingers and fingernails in the CMD key, SHIFT key and the spacebar.

Although I didn't care for the fact that these are wide open DNA/Food collectors they are solid with the keys. The only reason I don't use BT versions of keyboards is because I think I'd go through a lot of batteries considering I leave stuff on and spend many hours at the computer.

PC keyboards you show are nice too.

I have taken the white KBs apart multiple times to clean them out. You are 110% right - they are absolutely horrible for collecting food bits and dust & finger prints/gunk etc. It's pretty gross if you find one in the wild and look close lol. Yanno I just realized that the majority of the keyboards I use with my macs at this time are not Apple keyboards. I guess I have moved away from Apple keyboards over the years returning to these win oriented membrane & mechanical keyboards although there are a couple that I definitely do like. I am a big fan of my mechanical AEK for example but I lack the ability to connect it to anything remotely modern and I am not really much of a classic macos/mac user. I also really like the Apple aluminum extended A1243 as well as the shorty a1225. I have both of those as well and they are very comfortable to type on. My wife uses the a1225 currently and the wired extended a1243 I have out of rotation right now I guess. I also have four or five of the A1048, M7803 white and gray models and a bondi, grape and strawberry M2452. Those rarely make it out and typically stay stored out of the dust in a cabinet. You are spot on in regards to the batteries of wireless keyboards; they chew through batteries if you leave them on. The A1225 & my wireless ms wireless kb2.0 isnt terrible actually but the a1116 eats them for lunch. I have gotten in the habit of switching them off when not in use but also generally gravitate to wired keyboards for this reason as well.

It's funny to me that to your point, while I am absolutely a mac/osx/macos oriented end user, the majority of the kb's I'm using are win-centric in nature

 

[eyoungren]

I have taken the white KBs apart multiple times to clean them out. You are 110% right - they are absolutely horrible for collecting food bits and dust etc. It's pretty gross if you find one in the wild and look close lol. Yanno I just realized that the majority of the keyboards I use with my macs at this time are not Apple keyboards. I guess I have moved away from Apple keyboards over the years returning to these win oriented membrane & mechanical keyboards although there are a couple that I definitely do like. I am a big fan of my mechanical AEK for example but I lack the ability to connect it to anything remotely modern and I am not really much of a classic macos/mac user. I also really like the Apple aluminum extended A1243 as well as the shorty a1225. I have both of those as well and they are very comfortable to type on. My wife uses the a1225 currently and the wired extended a1243 I have out of rotation right now I guess. I also have four or five of the A1048, M7803 white and gray models and a bondi, grape and strawberry M2452. Those rarely make it out and typically stay stored out of the dust in a cabinet. You are spot on in regards to the batteries of wireless keyboards; they chew through batteries if you leave them on. The A1225 isnt terrible actually but the a1116 eats them for lunch. I have gotten in the habit of switching them off when not in use.

It's funny to me that to your point, while I am absolutely a mac/osx/macos user, the majority of the kb's Im using are win-centric keyboards

Yeah, I came from the DOS/PC era to Mac. One of the of things I very much disliked about Apple keyboard is that so many of them are not extended full-size. Once the M7803 came out, that became my favorite. I just didn't use them at my last job because I'd been waiting for the original G5 keyboard to fault/die. That took about 11 years of continuous use when one of the OPTN keys finally failed.

Fortunately, USB is USB, so my work Macs are connected to my favorite Apple keyboard.