The fruitless quest for a decent computer keyboard

I am a typist, I learnt to touch type some twenty years ago on manual typewriters, and just about every computer keyboard in existence just plain sucks.  The best electronic keyboard that I ever came across was on the old IBM Selectric typewriters, from the 1960s/1970s, the ones that many know as the “golf ball” typewriters (so called, because the typefaces were spread around a ball, about the size of a golfball).  They were also a damn good typewriter (the fastest I've come across, printed well, you could get all sorts of paper and card to go through them, and they lasted well over thirty years).

Unlike many computer keyboards, its keys were not made of porous plastic, which gets absolutely filthy and is nearly impossible to clean.  Nor were the keys made of soft plastic that wears down with just a few months use.  Nor did they wobble about and jam (because the wobble moves them in a way where they won't move vertically down).  It had keys made of a decent construction in every way:

What's wrong with bad keyboards:

What could be done to improve things?

Apart from sorting out all the promblems I mention above, and re-implementing the good things mentioned further above, it's about time that some updates were made to keyboards:

Any time I ask a shop for a good keyboard, I'm shown crappy ones that are more expensive because they've got extra buttons, or are shaped in some different way.  None of them were actually any good for typing.  IBM could do the world a huge favour, and make a computer keyboard just like they used to have on their Selectric typewriters.


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