I have been using the Happy Hacking Lite keyboard for two days now, which I think is an appropriate amount of time necessary to give an objective view about this keyboard. Now, the thing that makes this keyboard special and revered by some programmers and gamers alike is the amount of keys and how it is designed. With only 60 keys, compared to standard 101 keys, it is quite an adjustment when you are starting to use this keyboard. There is no numpad, actually there is nothing beyond Return. Don't worry, all your regular keys are accessible through the nifty function key, similar to those found on laptops
The first thing that was a challenge for me was the lack of inverted T arrows, you know.. standard keyboard arrows. In comparison to Happy Hacking Lite 2, which has inverted T arrows, regular Happy Hacking has only arrows accessible through the use of the FN/function key. Since I usually only use the arrows when editing using vim I quickly learned the hjkl maneuvering available in vim. Also, the placement of Esc is left of 1 is a gift from god for vim users who need the Esc key all the time.
While writing this node I came across another challenge. To type the characters < and > needed for HTML tags and such, I had to press the combination of keys Shift+Right Alt+Z or X. Now this is a pretty clumsy method of operation, but people using Happy Hacking keep saying one gets used to it after a while and do not wish to use "regular" keyboards again. I sure hope so.
Pros:
- Small size
- Sturdy
- Portable
- Configurable
- Comfortable
- Looks damn cool
- Not too squishy keys, not too clicky
Cons:
- Expensive
- Unusual
- Needs adjustment time
- Sometimes reminds of playing Twister
The keyboards are configurable through a set of DIP switches located at the back of the keyboard. The setting I found most pleasant was to set all four switches to on, thereby mapping the delete key which usually is backspace on most keyboards back into backspace, and making the alt keys into function and windows keys, and the metakeys into alt. I did this because the alt keys are very small and I found this unpleasant and moved them over to the larger meta keys.
This is a pretty cool keyboard, and if you are interested and you've got the cash, buy it.