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Back years ago, when the corporations hadn't the technology to make keyboards cheap so they made them good instead, a standard keyboard was a real circuitboard[1], with real holes in whose real pushbuttons were soldered into. Only the cheapest keyboards got the membranes. I bought my first PC-AT keyboard back in between 1991 and 1992. It's FCC ID is FY4404DK-CTW060, for further reference.
Then the Progress came. *spit* It became increasingly common that a keyboard was nothing more than a pair of mentioned plastic sheets, and a handful of el-cheapo plastic parts. Yes, it costs (not much though, even inflation-adjusted) less than the keyboards cost back then, but the feel of the keys is awfully "muddy" (I like the 'click' feel - some modern keyboards mimic it with little metal springs but it's just cheating), the keys need to be pressed different way (I like my keyboard reacting 'light', not having to press the key beyond the point of 'click'), and the overall 'feel' of the keyboard is ... blyeah, no comment.
When it comes to further customization, modern keyboards aren't worth the cusses spent on them. My old-and-still-working keyboard has two more keys in the cursor area, connected parallel to "esc" and "tab" keys, thus combining all the keys used for selecting from menus in a single area, making it possible to do most of routine select-and-go operations one-handed without waving the hand over the keyboard. (When I have to use other keyboards, I miss the custom keys.) I done it by sawing away piece of the keyboard cover and gluing the two pushbuttons (cannibalized from a deceased keyboard of the same type) on the circuitboard and connecting them to the proper places on the circuitboard.
In short, modern keyboards are shit. I hadn't found a keyboard I would be happy with, from the more modern ones. All I seen are fakes, cheats, and poor cheap designs. Phooy.
When I want to buy a car, it is common to show me what's under the hood. When I want to buy a keyboard, I hadn't met a shop where they would be able to tell me what construction the keyboard has (I don't bitch that they don't let me to take it apart, but they should at least know what they are selling).
Regarding the old vs modern devices - one thing should be noted. I had a handful of hard drives dying on me because of wear. However, I had old Seagate ST disks, 20 and 80 megs (the second was ST4097), that ran without failure until being decommissioned because of obsolescence. (The second one was in service in a scratch-monkey machine I was playing on with dangerous things like viruses, until about an year ago when it was replaced because of noise (not the wear noise - it was noisily buzzing from the very beginning) - after spending last 4-5 years in de facto nonstop run (as I don't like to switch off the computers - I believe a computer has to be ready to serve the very second it is needed).
Now tell me that the new computers are better than the old ones. Yes, they have more of computing power. Yes, the disks are bigger. No, they aren't more reliable, nor more durable.
...and it is not limited only to keyboards and mouses; my pet peeve are connectors. Back in the Old Times, commmunist connectors had bodies from phenol-formaldehyde resin, with brass pins coated with real silver. 3.5mm jacks had the parts that held the contacts made from fiberglass. Now? The connectors are made from thermoplast that deforms when you attempt to solder on the pins, the pins are coated with fucking nickel that the solder refuses to talk with which prolongs the soldering time which increases the chance of ruining the connectors by moving the pins. Especially sensitive for this are the 3.5mm female jacks, cable version.
Progress. Bah.
-- The Mad Scientist
[1] Years back, when I was still used to circuitboards from real epoxide-reinforced fiberglass that domestic manufacturers used, I considered the practice of Russians to use cheaper pertinax (phenol-resin reinforced paper) as inferior. Then the Revolution came and the Iron Curtain fell and the markets got flooded by stuff from the Ohsogreat West. Then I dropped my walkman and found the circuitboard broke - because it was the same sucking inferior material as Russians used, and without the Russian defensive-style massive construction. (Luckily only few traces led through the broken part so a piece of wire and a drop of epoxide solved the problem.) I lost my faith that Capitalist electronics has to be better than Communist one; no, it's the same make-it-cheap crap, just with better-looking design. From then I got a lot of gifts (friends know that a piece of deceased electronics that I can take apart is a thing to make me happy for the night I play with it), and done a lot of repairs, and seen things I can't call other than atrocious: Constructions that look like *designed* to wear out (ie, toothed metal bar (with sharp edges) against toothed plastic cog - naturally, it ate a groove to the cog and then the VCR refused to spit the casette out), in order to fail and make it easier to their owners to decide to throw them away and buy new ones. Planned obsolescence, the engine of crapitalism.
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