The 40% Keyboard
Call me cynical, but I think a lot of the small style keyboards I see around the office are more of a fashion trend than anything.<p>I remember when the insistence was on number pads, and how dare they be removed from our laptops and desktop keyboards.<p>Fast forward a few years and I was made fun of at a programming job for preferring a full keyboard with a number pads. I guess programmers are too cool to enter in dollar amounts into Excel.<p>Now the trend is for brightly multi-colored keys, which are often unlabeled [1], and basically an otherwise standard rectangular keyboard which has no obvious ergonomic benefit over a full 100+ key keyboard.<p>[1] This makes no sense because the colored keys imply you enjoy looking at your keys and their unlabeled nature implies that you don’t need to look at your keys while you type. i.e. a fashion trend.