the unbearable awfulness of laptop keyboards

Posted by Mark 18/02/2012 at 03h40

I've been a happy Mac user for some time now. It's not that I use the Mac-specific stuff terribly often: I rarely dip a toe into Cocoa programming any more, and the only thing missing in Ubuntu-land now seems to be a decent Twitter client. However, the Mac laptops have been so great, both aesthetically and functionally, that I haven't been tempted to switch.

Circumstances change, however. I'll be travelling to the States in April to do a demo of my new startup, http://ninjablocks.com, and the heft of an aging 17" MBP will likely be prohibitive. Unfortunately, the new generation of MacBook Airs and Pros have those damnable chiclet keyboards: no travel, no tactility, just the disturbing sensation of typing on wood. Not for me, ladies and gentlemen.

So, I cast around looking for an alternative. Pickings are very, very slim, I'm sad to say. My basic requirements:

  1. 13" screen. 17" is too much to use anywhere but a desk, 15" is still too big for a plane.
  2. Minimum 1600x900 resolution. 1920x1080 would be lovely, but 1366x768 is a grim joke.
  3. Capable of having 8gb gently inserted into its nether regions.
  4. 128gb SSD (at least)
  5. Decent keyboard.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me: I'm not a cheap consumer, a 4k laptop would hurt a bit but I'd pay it. (For a TypeMatrix keyboard grafted to a decent laptop, I'd pay it eagerly.) As far as I can see, though, the product I want just doesn't exist. The MBAs are lovely but max out on 4gb ram, as well as the aforementioned keyboard problems. Thinkpads have excellent keyboards and are massively upgradeable, and I even kind of like the Russian tank aesthetic, but the maximum resolution is just woeful. Finally, the Sony Vaio Series Z fits all of my criteria - as a bonus, they're svelte, beautiful devices, and the resolution is crazy good, but the keyboard is even worse than the MBA. Tragically bad for any laptop, and even less forgivable in what's meant to be the Ferrari of the genre.

Have I missed anything out there? I'd love to find something before I go over. The MBA update is coming in April, but the form factor seems more or less set.

(ps. my startup is going to change the world, you should definitely pledge us some money on kickstarter.)