i beat the crap out of my keyboard

There was a time when I was all about mechanical PC keyboards. I stopped with all that nonsense once my hands started hurting from use of one of those. I would keep bottoming/"thudding" the keys. It did not matter what switch type I used. If the keyboard was mechanical, I would bottom the keys. Not good.

I switched back to regular PC keyboards, and yep, no more hand pain. But I had to find the right one, which I did.

Above is my Perixx keyboard. It's a model that's no longer made. This keyboard is my favorite kind, which is USB wired backlit type. Perixx has since since introduced a new "plain" model and you'll see that from the many different types they make. I actually very much like the wide selection they have. Everything from regular to roundy keys to split ergonomic to scissor laptop-style keys and everything in between. They even have one that's literally split in half so you can make the separation as short or long as you like. Nice.

When I got my Perixx keyboard, within less than a week I immediately bought another. It's still in the box. I only took it out once to make sure it worked, then back in the box it went. When the one I have finally wears out, then I'll use the second one.

But as you see from the photo above, yeah, I beat the crap out of my keyboard. The comma and period keys are the ones where the keycap coating started to wear off first. My down and right arrow keys have similar rub-off, and the S is showing some slight wear now. All the other keys are still holding up fairly well.

Performance of the keyboard is more or less the same as when new. While true I have 7 backlight colors to choose from, I just go with white. Of the three brightness settings available to me, I use the lowest setting, and that's enough to see what I'm doing.

I also very much appreciate the layout is NORMAL. No crazy/wacky stuff going on. The arrow keys are the standard inverted T, the Ins/Home/PgUp/Del/End/Pgn is in a standard 3-over-3 cluster, number pad is normal, F keys on top are normal, Enter is a single rectangle and wide, backslash is about half that length and normal, and so on. It's just all normal. Normal is good. It also has a Win-key on it, which I use for keyboard shortcuts often. Again, good.

It's very nice that there are many choices for a cheap backlit wired USB keyboard. Perixx is just one brand as there are many. And, thankfully, a lot of them have a STANDARD layout without any wacky crap going on.

I also love that keyboard makers finally wised up and started offering large print versions of them. The keys are the same size but the text on them is larger. Even if your eyesight is good, these are way better than the standard print size an always have been. Why? Easy answer. What they did is copied the print size that old typewriters used to have on their keycaps.

Yeah, it took going back to the past and looking at typewriters to finally get a proper appearance everybody can use for computer keyboard keys. It took a long while to get there, but we have them now, and they're cheap. That's a win.

Published 2024 Jul 25