Reading the Town Mouse blog today reminded me of my own, usually impatient, efforts to clean my laptop keyboard. Once, approaching the task with enthusiasm and a brand new yellow duster, I managed to remove half-a-dozen keys at a stroke. I never discovered a way to refit them but fitting a replacement keyboard was easy.
My present problem is much more irritating because this laptop is less than two years old and the problem started several months ago (but outside the guarantee period, naturally). Quite why T I O L and N should have been the first to wear away I don’t know but wouldn’t you think they could make a keyboard that didn’t do this? I never saw this problem after many years of use on any of the typewriters that I owned, and they all got far more pounding than any computer keyboard.
It’s compressed air time for mine – I’m not at all averse to purchasing a cannister of the stuff, particularly when my problem is kitty fur. That part should be easy.
What interests me is the letter-wearing. I’ve lost the inner half of my “S” and the upper part of my “L”. As you rightly point out, they shouldn’t be wearing at all. Mine is only a year and ten months old. I still have the old Corona typewriter from my high school days, for heaven’s sake, and the keys are fine.
But I do wonder what the patterns of wear say about the USERS of these things. Wouldn’t it be fun to survey a hundred keyboard users and see which keys are wearing? Is it something physical – the way hands are allowed to rest on the keyboard? Or might it be that I just happen to write S and L heavy text, while you use more TIOL and Ns?
As you can tell, it’s Sunday evening, and I’m letting my mind roam a little freely. But I do wonder if there’s anyone out there losing the printing on their Y,B and Q keys
The old Corona typewriter! What nostalgia! It’s only 25 years, or thereabouts, since I ceased to use a typewriter yet it seems like a lifetime. Back in the ’70s I had an ancient Imperial 66 which stood tall on four sturdy legs with its interior completely visible. I had acquired it by intercepting my boss on his way to the office rubbish skip with Imperial in his arms. Prior to that I had an IBM Golfball electric typewriter which would work for a short time, then overheat and take an extended rest (I knew quite a lot of people like that!). The Imperial was replaced by an Olivetti portable. The machine that I really regret getting rid of was my father’s Bluebird portable in its elegantly shaped wooden case.
On thinking about these things it seems like, and in fact was, a totally different world.