Short story: static electricity sucks.
Slightly longer story: static electricity really sucks.
Longish story: For about a month, I have noticed that the metallic rim around my Kensington keyboard is susceptible to ESD. Furthermore, I realized that this rim is not grounded because occasionally, a shock would cause the keyboard to reset. So, I’ve generally been careful about using it and have tried to touch something metallic before sitting down to type.
Inevitably, I forgot to do this and blew out the keyboard driver’s brains one unfortunate night. So, I scrambled to find a new keyboard and came up with another Kensington keyboard. I like scissor-switch keyboards (the kinds used in laptops) because of the low travel distance. Kensington seems to be one of the few makers of scissor-switch keyboards nowadays. This keyboard has no exposed metallic parts, so I was a little more confident about purchasing this unit. Another option would have been to purchase the same keyboard that I had before and then connect the metallic rim to the ground port of the USB input.
Anyways, overall, I like the feel of it and I have gotten used to the significantly lower travel time, but I don’t know if my typing is quite as fast as it was on my previous keyboard yet. The arrow keys are really small, which makes them hard to reach quickly if I’m in Insert mode in VIM and need to move quickly (so I’ve started to use ^O + movement more often). The keys feel a bit flimsy compared to my last keyboard.
Unfortunately, the little plastic mat that is underneath all of the keys was not built to size and bulged up right underneath the CTRL key (which I consider to be extremely important). So, I had to cut away a piece of the mat to make things work again. Unfortunately, this now exposes the (surprisingly dirty) metal beneath it, so the keyboard is again exposed to ESD… Hopefully this part is grounded (though I’ll probably try to add some kind of layer of insulation when I get a chance).
It’s clear that this keyboard just doesn’t have the quality of my last one. The keys are thinner and feel much cheaper. For comparison, I took off the CTRL keys.
However, I’m getting used to the slight differences in this keyboard and my typing speed has improved dramatically since I first got it. The low travel distance isn’t really a problem for me; I haven’t accidentally hit any keys because of it.
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