Avian’s Blog

For a while I've wanted to switch my regular keyboard with one of the micro keyboards that started appearing on the market (those are keyboards that more or less only have the typewriter set of keys on them).

These days I spend most of my computer time editing code in Vim. I never had much use for the numeric keypad and only touch keys outside the typewriter area when I'm not using the text editor. I often have a pen and a (paper) notebook on the desk, so I find the center of table real-estate too valuable to waste on keys I only use occasionally.

Despite my efforts I couldn't find any quality micro keyboard in Slovenia. So I decided to order a Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite2 USB from a shop in US. Two weeks ago it finally arrived and I've been using it at the office ever since. These are my first impressions.

The initial impression is that it's solidly built. The tactile feedback of the switches is very nice, with enough resistance and key travel. Because the keyboard is that small, the general feeling I have is more like a laptop than a regular desktop.

The small form factor made me change my typing style a little. I used to press right shift together with the punctuation keys on the left of enter with my right hand. But that is really awkward with the position of the right shift on this keyboard, so I have to consciously force myself to use the left shift for shifting characters on the right side.

HHK has the control key in the right position (left of the letter a). It took a while to get used to, but after two weeks it turned out to be more convenient than the standard bottom-left corner position for common operations (shell control, copy-and-paste outside Vim, Firefox).

I don't miss the function keys at all. In two weeks I needed them a couple of times, mostly for closing an odd window or a shortcut in x-chat. Cursor keys are another matter and I feel that it's harder to find them because they are slightly lower than the rest of the keys.

I'm using the setting that replaces the delete key with backspace. It's a bit weird that this isn't the default - I can't imagine living without easily accessible backspace, while I can easily demote the delete key to a fn-key combination.

Now for the bad part. There are a couple of things that made the whole experience a bit underwhelming.

Every once in a while shift appears to get stuck. The effect is the same as if one of the shift keys would be continuously depressed. It's not caps lock, because it also affects punctuation and number keys. Bashing randomly on both shifts fixes that and I'm not sure if this is a problem with the keyboard or a bug in software - I've seen similar issues on other computers, but never this often.

Worse than that, the keyboard sometimes misses out keystrokes. Most often the escape key is ignored, which is very annoying in Vim. I haven't yet figured out what's the cause of that. If I slowly press the escape key it registers reliably, so I'm again not sure if it's a hardware problem. It's possible I simply don't push it enough when I'm touch typing or that I hit the escape key too much off-center.

I can't really blame the manufacturer for the third annoyance, but I'll mention it nonetheless: while I can't stand the Slovenian keyboard layout for writing code, it still essential to me when writing Slovenian text (I refuse to let go of our national characters). The problem with HHK is that "ž" ends up in the upper-right, on the left of "9", which is just about the worst place it can be.

In conclusion, after two weeks I'm still slower at typing code with HHK than I used to be with the standard keyboard. Typos and the annoyances I mentioned above seem to be the main culprits. Apart from that it's an enjoyable keyboard to work on and I'll give it another couple of weeks to see if practice will make any of its problems fade away.

I just bought this keyboard from Amazon, and I cannot friggin wait for it. A friend of mine has the original one that came out in Japan that he got like, 10 years ago when he was actually in Japan. I love his keyboard, and cannot wait for my own.

I hope yours will work better than mine - it's still gathering dust, waiting for me to fix the faulty cursor keys.

Yea, I hope it works better than yours did too seeing as how I dropped almost $100 for it after shipping. If you would like, I could let you know how mine did once I get it.

Please do. It would be interesting to know if it's just my particular keyboard that's bad.

Alright, so I got the keyboard today. So far, it is working fantastically, and I am actually typing this comment on it. My initial feelings on it, is that it is a fantastic keyboard. I am already loving it and love typing on it. But a couple weeks of use will really tell whether it was worth the $90 investment. I will update you as to how its going in the beginning of October. If you have any questions or want to contact me, you have my email.

Well, I told you that I would use the keyboard for a little while and get back to you. I am not even sure if you are still interested in it, but I will honor my promise nonetheless. After a little more than a week of use, I can tell you that the keyboard is still functioning 100% properly. I have not experienced any issues with it at all. So on one hand, that is a good thing, because it reinforces the fact that the Happy Hacking series of keyboards are products of great quality. On the other, it also confirms that you got a rare defect that is to be expected from any product that we may purchase in the future. I am sorry that you have had bad experiences with your keyboard, and I wish you all the best with it.

Your blog is very interesting, and I will probably pop my head in from time to time. Good luck.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It's interesting to have another point of data about the quality of HHK.

A couple of days ago I gave it another shot and I think I've finally fixed mine so the cursor keys are working reliably.

I have been using HH keyboards for many years now -
I have 3 of them, various models -
and here are some tips for vi you might like:

1/ prefer using the h,j,k,l keys for cursor movement.
It is *much* faster and once you get the hang of it you
will wonder why you waited so long.

1.5 the Unix games "hunt" and "rogue" are great for
honing your vi letter cursor skills. :)

2/ Prefer using Ctrl-[ for the Escape character.
Now that you have a HH keyboard,
with the Control key located where God (Bill Joy, inventor of vi)
intended, you might as well make the most of it!
Using Ctrl-[ is again *much* faster than reaching for Escape key
with your little finger.

3/ If you are an Emacs fan, then also enjoy the superior location of
the Control key. See 2/.

4/ If you are *nix, consider using a shell such as tcsh, Bash, or Ksh
which supports vi and/or Emacs modes for history editing, etc. -
and further leverage you new Control key location,
including the Ctrl-[ trick mentioned in 2/.

5/ Now that you are used to having Control key in proper location,
consider converting any computers running Windows to map their
CapsLock keys to be Control.
The best solution I have found for this is a small registry hack which
re-maps CapsLock to be Control, and also leaves left side Control key
as Control. Who uses CapsLock anyway? :)
By editing the registry, the new mapping also works in vnc and other such apps.

6/ Enjoy your new keyboard!!!

Thanks for the tips mojohn.

I'm an avid fan of Nethack, so hjkl movement is already in my muscle memory. Still, the cursor keys are important. Browser, e-mail client and shell (bash) are the programs that I use regularly and require their use. Not to mention something like gEDA or PCB.

Although I use vim exclusively for text editing, I found vi mode in bash somewhat awkward, so I gave up on it after a week.

Same with ctrl-[ instead of escape. Actually, I find that HHK has a very convenient escape placement, so I don't really see the benefit of having to press two keys instead of one.

I switched the ctrl position on all the computers I use to the "right" place. Don't know about Windows, but in GNOME there's a convenient setting for this in System > Preferences -> Keyboard > Layouts > Layout Options > Ctrl key position.

Hi, I am planning on getting a HHKB pro in the near future, and I too am a big fan of the HJKL movement keys.. when I get mine I am planning on remapping the cursor keys to HJKL so that it won't be an issue. I know I can remap them with my current keyboard, but the fact that there are already function keys on HJKL with the HHKB will likely make it easier.. I just need to remap the right arrow to *, the down arrow to /, etc. With my current keyboard I think I have to turn the left control into a new mod key..

Also I'm learning the dvorak layout (well, programmer's dvorak), and really miss having my HJKL keys over home row. This way I'll just put the cursor keys there and be done with it.

I have a strange issue with my HHK lite 2. Every once a month or so it gets strange. Caps are stuck, Alt Tab goes backwards etc. The only way I've found to fix the problem is to reboot. I also noticed that the esc does not work quite often.