Computer Keyboards: the old, the new and the faded

So out the bloody thing goes! And in its place I have this lovely new one. And, at last, I can tell which letters are produced by which keys. The problem of letters that vanish from the keys over time is quite a common one. On my old Dell keyboard, the ‘N’ and the ‘M’ have long since vanished – and the ‘I’, the ‘O’, the ‘D’ and the ‘H’ are all rapidly going the same way. Search on Amazon for ‘permanent white marker’ and you’ll soon discover a great many people who have bought marker pens in the hope of restoring their faded keys.

I decided to take more drastic action. I bought myself a new keyboard. After some searching, the one I settled upon was the Logitech K310 – fairly cheap at under £30 (about $45). The most notable claim to fame of this keyboard is that it is washable. Apparently you can submerse the whole thing in a bowl of water when you want to give it a freshen up. This, however, is not the feature that most attracted me. What caught my eye was the claim that its ‘Laser printed, UV coated keys’ are tough enough to washstand regular use, including washing, without the letters fading away in the process. I’ve only been using the keyboard a few days so I will have to take that on trust – all I can say is, so far so good. It’s actually a pretty nice keyboard – smart-looking (dark grey with white keys), and low profile. It’s a non-mechanical keyboard so you only need to type lightly, and there is just enough feedback (the clacking of the keys) to satisfy someone like me who grew up using tough old-style mechanical keyboards.

If I had a free choice, I would still prefer to be using one of the old-style keyboards. I like a good ‘clacking’ noise (ah, for an old IBM keyboard!) and the old keyboards also had letters which – like the words in a stick of Blackpool rock – ran all the way through the keys. Those letters weren’t mere flimsy ‘transfers’ on the key surface. The only way the letters could wear out was if the entire key wore out too.