Looking for laptop with reasonable keyboard

[kovarex]

So I would like to buy a new laptop, so I can work outside, in train etc., so I can be more mobile.

The thing is, that I'm used to my Desktop pc with standard keyboard, and I hate the typical laptop keyboard layouts.

What I'm looking for is some high quality laptop with high performance (Compile time of Factorio takes time) that has reasonable keyboard. It is important that it has the Function keys (F1 - F10) And standard setup of the 6 edit keys ( Insert/home/Page up)/(Delete/End/PageDown), ideally above the arrow keys.

This is example of the almost ideal keyboard, but I would still prefer to not have the Fn key there and having the 6 edit keys right above the arrow keys as on common keyboard.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/t ... aptop.html

Any ideas and recommendations?

[ssilk]

Hm. I know none which needs not a while of getting used to it. But for me MacBook or ThinkPad worked quite well. I had both and the keyboard is for both quite acceptable. For MacBook you need get used to it a bit more, cause the layout differs, but no big problem, once you are used to them you love it. what I see meanwhile more important is the service...

[Drexir]

So I would like to buy a new laptop, so I can work outside, in train etc., so I can be more mobile.

The thing is, that I'm used to my Desktop pc with standard keyboard, and I hate the typical laptop keyboard layouts.

What I'm looking for is some high quality laptop with high performance (Compile time of Factorio takes time) that has reasonable keyboard. It is important that it has the Function keys (F1 - F10) And standard setup of the 6 edit keys ( Insert/home/Page up)/(Delete/End/PageDown), ideally above the arrow keys.

This is example of the almost ideal keyboard, but I would still prefer to not have the Fn key there and having the 6 edit keys right above the arrow keys as on common keyboard.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/t ... aptop.html

Any ideas and recommendations?

The problem with high performance laptops is that the battery is gonna drain fast. Have you thought about having a build server? Or at least having the laptop remotely connect to your desktop. And basically just upload only the changed source code to your desktop have it build, and download the new compiled program to the laptop. Or just remotely test the changes on your desktop.

Here is my keyboard on my laptop workstation (sounds similar to the layout your looking for):

[kovarex]

Yes, this is the layout of all the lenovo laptops I have seen.

This is the list of changes I would make to the keyboard to make it keyboard of my dreams:

• Remove all the numeric keyboard, great now we have lot of space for the important stuff.
• Move arrow keys there, right of the enter, as it is on other decent keyboards.
• Create the standard shape out of the 6 control keys (InsertDelete) + (Home/end) + (Page up/PageDown)
• Extend the size of all the keys left to the arrow keys (Enter/Shift/Control/ backslash)
• Remove the FN key, the control key will be extended instead.
• Remove the trackball

And this is what I would call the perfect laptop keboard. Why isn't anyone doing this one? How expensive is it to make custom one like this one for the laptop?

[ssilk]

Do you want a laptop, which you can use everywhere or carry a stone? because that happens, if your laptop is so big, that it can take all the keys.

Let me say like so: after now 15 years and many hours standing on train stations and waiting for train, running around in cities and so on, taking it with me into the holidays, I set a course on every gram my laptop weights.

The result is always a compromise and depends strong on personal feeling and preferences.

Oh and for your keyboard problem: how about taking an extra keyboard with you? There are hundreds of more or less fine external keyboards, light, slim, with mouse, without, with number pad, number pad only, some extra function keys... Oh, and don't buy anything with batteries, in the most cases you really need it, they are empty.

[kovarex]

Having to use external keyboard AND external with the laptop would be pretty annyoing.

This is was I was able to find, obviously I'm not the only one, but there are not many people taking this seriously:
http://superuser.com/questions/477365/a ... or-laptops

Especially This picture:
http://gaming.coolermaster.com/images/p ... ge_177.jpg

I want this keyboard to be in the laptop, please god.

[Drexir]

Having to use external keyboard AND external with the laptop would be pretty annyoing.

This is was I was able to find, obviously I'm not the only one, but there are not many people taking this seriously:
http://superuser.com/questions/477365/a ... or-laptops

Especially This picture:
http://gaming.coolermaster.com/images/p ... ge_177.jpg

I want this keyboard to be in the laptop, please god.

Ahh I see you have great taste. Just so happen to have the exact same keyboard; the cherry brown switches variant. Going from a cheap $30 logitech keyboard to a $70 mechanical keyboard was a game changer especially for competitive gaming. It's also tenkeyless which is great because you magically now have a much more compact keyboard which shortens the distance between WASD to the mouse. If that's not optimizing game performance I don't know what is lol. Granted you lose performance in a spreadsheet. Also every so often you'll come across a game that uses the numpad which is irritating cause usually those games they have something bound to every other key. So rebinding becomes a nightmare. Those are rare though.

Yea with a laptop there's no customizing or modifying involved. What the manufacturer produces is what you get. Have you ever tried just replacing a laptop keyboard? What a nightmare. It's like who the hell designed this thing. Sometimes you will get laptops that play nicer. The first company to start making modular laptops will win the hearts of all geeks around the world. I forget where I read someone is trying to make a modular phone if you can make a freaking modular phone I'm sure it's easier to do for laptops. The thing is laptops are dying in favor of tablets, and phones. I mean people are replacing their computers with these things. Sorry I can't take something seriously if it doesn't have an Ethernet port. What am I talking about? They don't even have a keyboard or mouse. You got a touch screen with a virtual keyboard. That you have to pecker at and hope it properly registers the key you intended it too.

Don't know how I got into a ranting.

Can't really offer you much advice since you seem to have done the research. Like you said you're gonna have to pay for a customized keyboard. I'm not sure who would do that or how much they would charge. Even if you did get a customized one if it's a cheaply made keyboard just like most keyboards on the market keys will stop working for what ever reason. And you will have to pay again for that expensive custom keyboard. Just keep that in mind. Build Quality, Customization, and Price.

[Darthlawsuit]

If you basically want a mobile desktop get the Asus G-Series. I am using it right now and it has more power than my desktop, both are gaming but desktop is a bit older. I can have 4 windows of firefox open with a shit ton of tabs, have youtube music playing, play a game of civilization 4 on multiplayer as host, and play factorio at the same time with no delay or pausing on any of the games. It is a beast, though its battery life is terrible (1 hours max on high performance mode). I have switched from desktop to this because it is basically a mobile desktop and my desktop has been turned into a file storage server XD

This is the list of changes I would make to the keyboard to make it keyboard of my dreams:

Remove all the numeric keyboard, great now we have lot of space for the important stuff.

If you don't use the numeric keypad why don't you just remap them to keys that you do like. It would be easier than finding a custom keyboard, could even add shortcuts to special characters.

[obuw]

As a fellow coder (and game developer) who is used to coding on a proper keyboard, I can relate to your problem.

I do have a laptop, and I find that my productivity drops heavily when I have to work on the laptop keyboard - the insert/delete/home/end key locations are the biggest problem.

I pretty much always have the laptop plugged into a monitor, with a mouse and keyboard, unless I'm on the road. Even then, I always have a wireless keyboard & mouse with me. The way I see it, the mouse is pretty much mandatory, and since I already have a wireless usb receiver plugged in for the mouse, I may as well also carry a keyboard and use it whenever I can.

I like logitech for this, as their unifying receiver lets you mix & match any mouse / keyboard combination you want (as long as they are logitech ofc).

For the laptop, I don't go for high performance, as I know it'll never be even remotely as good as a desktop for gaming. I instead compare models by weight, noise, and battery life. I obviously would not go as far as recommending a netbook, as it would take ages to compile a game, but I generally compare mid-range models and go for the one with the lowest weight / noise and the highest battery life.

One thing that would be very handy is those laptops that have a rotatable monitor (like this: http://digital-lifestyles.info/copy_ima ... xt2-lg.jpg). With that kind of setup, you can flip the screen 180 degrees and put your keyboard in front of it. However, I don't have any firsthand experience with those laptops, and most if not all of them seem to be touchscreen models that pretend to be some kind of tablet / laptop hybrid, so I don't know how they fare performance-wise.

That's my two cents. Good luck finding a model that suits your needs.

[Darthlawsuit]

For the laptop, I don't go for high performance, as I know it'll never be even remotely as good as a desktop for gaming. I instead compare models by weight, noise, and battery life. I obviously would not go as far as recommending a netbook, as it would take ages to compile a game, but I generally compare mid-range models and go for the one with the lowest weight / noise and the highest battery life.

I used to think the same thing till one of my friends got an Asus G-Series. These things are beast I can play Rome 2 at high everything on my laptop and the thing never over-heats, not that I want to play that shitty game. I actually have to switch to my laptop to play many games. The only downside is that you cannot upgrade the graphics card so whatever you buy your stuck with while a Desktop can be upgraded =/

[obuw]

I used to think the same thing till one of my friends got an Asus G-Series. These things are beast I can play Rome 2 at high everything on my laptop and the thing never over-heats, not that I want to play that shitty game. I actually have to switch to my laptop to play many games. The only downside is that you cannot upgrade the graphics card so whatever you buy your stuck with while a Desktop can be upgraded =/

Two of my friends have Asus G-Series laptops. Yeah, they are great at first, apart from the immense weight and size. But by 6 months of heavy usage, the internals get messed up like every other laptop, and they can't even compete with a 4-year old desktop. They don't even bother carrying them around anymore.

I guess as long as it is not your primary machine (so it won't age as fast), and you don't mind carrying around a brick, an Asus-G is a reasonable investment.

[Darthlawsuit]

I used to think the same thing till one of my friends got an Asus G-Series. These things are beast I can play Rome 2 at high everything on my laptop and the thing never over-heats, not that I want to play that shitty game. I actually have to switch to my laptop to play many games. The only downside is that you cannot upgrade the graphics card so whatever you buy your stuck with while a Desktop can be upgraded =/

Two of my friends have Asus G-Series laptops. Yeah, they are great at first, apart from the immense weight and size. But by 6 months of heavy usage, the internals get messed up like every other laptop, and they can't even compete with a 4-year old desktop. They don't even bother carrying them around anymore.

I guess as long as it is not your primary machine (so it won't age as fast), and you don't mind carrying around a brick, an Asus-G is a reasonable investment.

I actually like the weight and size, it makes it feel less like a piece of breakable glass and more a piece of hardware. Internals get messed up? What are you doing using your laptop as a frisbee? Laptops don't have internal damage as time goes on; unless you are mistreating them or not cleaning the dust out of the fans. I have a laptop from 2007 that works as good today as the day I bought it.

It is my primary machine I am on it 10+ hours a day and have done it for years. No problems at all. My friend has had an Asus G-series for 5 years and it still works fine minus a little quirkyness with the monitor bolt. Your friends obviously treat their computers like shit so they break.

[ssilk]

If you're on the way some days in the week, you definitely have other requirements to the hardware, than if it is more or less stational.

[obuw]

I actually like the weight and size, it makes it feel less like a piece of breakable glass and more a piece of hardware. Internals get messed up? What are you doing using your laptop as a frisbee? Laptops don't have internal damage as time goes on; unless you are mistreating them or not cleaning the dust out of the fans. I have a laptop from 2007 that works as good today as the day I bought it.

It is my primary machine I am on it 10+ hours a day and have done it for years. No problems at all. My friend has had an Asus G-series for 5 years and it still works fine minus a little quirkyness with the monitor bolt. Your friends obviously treat their computers like shit so they break.

I suppose I should have been more clear with what I mean with "Internals getting messed up". It's not damage from playing hot potato with the laptop after pouring diet coke over its keyboard. It's the heat damaging the components. Everyone I know who ever purchased a gaming laptop (including me), who used it as their primary gaming machine (read: played games on it 6+ hours a day) had the same end result. The performance degrades to the point you can't even run games on low settings, while you could run them at high when you first bought the laptop.

I suppose it could be related to the warm weather we have here. When I was further up north, my laptop never had overheating problems, but down here in the south I have to keep the monitor lid open and put it on an elevated platform just to be able to play factorio, or it shuts down within minutes. o_O

[LoSboccacc]

As far as keyboard goes, I found the one on the Lenovo I work on brilliant.

W530 is even better, and there are also variants with full numpad

[LoSboccacc]

I join the lenovo praising crowd. i have a w520 at work and it is brilliant.

There are model without the numpad like the w530, but the arrow group is a bit awkward mostly because it has to fit under enter to make use of the full space available

The y series have the arrows under enter but at least they come squared.

[Darthlawsuit]

I actually like the weight and size, it makes it feel less like a piece of breakable glass and more a piece of hardware. Internals get messed up? What are you doing using your laptop as a frisbee? Laptops don't have internal damage as time goes on; unless you are mistreating them or not cleaning the dust out of the fans. I have a laptop from 2007 that works as good today as the day I bought it.

It is my primary machine I am on it 10+ hours a day and have done it for years. No problems at all. My friend has had an Asus G-series for 5 years and it still works fine minus a little quirkyness with the monitor bolt. Your friends obviously treat their computers like shit so they break.

I suppose I should have been more clear with what I mean with "Internals getting messed up". It's not damage from playing hot potato with the laptop after pouring diet coke over its keyboard. It's the heat damaging the components. Everyone I know who ever purchased a gaming laptop (including me), who used it as their primary gaming machine (read: played games on it 6+ hours a day) had the same end result. The performance degrades to the point you can't even run games on low settings, while you could run them at high when you first bought the laptop.

I suppose it could be related to the warm weather we have here. When I was further up north, my laptop never had overheating problems, but down here in the south I have to keep the monitor lid open and put it on an elevated platform just to be able to play factorio, or it shuts down within minutes. o_O

Did the gaming laptops you bought have good fans? I haven't seen any decrease in performance with my laptop, only time it gets really hot is after I haven't cleaned it for a few months. When you say down south do you mean playing games in 90-100 degree weather?

Here is what the cooling system on my laptop looks like:

[obuw]

Yeah the average temperature during summer is 35 degrees (95 fahrenheit) here. But the overheating problems start much earlier.

But let's not derail the topic any further. We're here to help kovarex find the dream laptop that has the insert/delete/home/end keys in the right location.

Perhaps a laptop with a programmable keyboard could be a possibility. But I don't think those things even exist. Oh who am I kidding, even standalone programmable keyboards are impossible to find, I think Optimus Maximus was the only one in existence. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard)

[kovarex]

I can always remap keys in the system, this is actually what I plan to do, reuse the numpad for that, and throw away all the other keys.

[SilverWarior]

I don't know if this is also true for laptop keyboards but on normal keyboard when you turn of numLock numerical keys acts as arow keys (4=left, 6=right, 8=up, 2=down) and other keys acts as Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up and Page Down.
So maybe you won't even need custom keyboard but only a bit of getting used to.

I myself own Acer Aspire 6530g laptop which has this keyboard layout:
http://prohardver.hu/dl/cnt/2009-05/460 ... oard_b.jpg
While Insert and Delete keys are not in most practical position I must say that I got used to them quite quickly.
And yes I'm also a programmer as you are so I know what good position of keys means.