One thing I've learned: Hardware manufacturers may not have noticed, but we users care deeply about our keyboards. To be more specific, our keys.

    Take Douglas Abrams, a 49-year-old American based in Singapore. Mr. Abrams' work may be cutting edge -- he runs an online bank called FirstMeta supplying credit cards to the users of virtual world SecondLife -- but his keyboard isn't. It's one of a pair of IBM Model M 1391401 keyboards he's been using since 1989 -- the year his chief operating officer, Aileen Sim, turned 6. She, by the way, is not impressed: As she taps away at his computer demonstrating how their MetaCard works in SecondLife, she complains loudly above the racket his keyboard makes.
Mr. Abrams is unrepentant: 'Over that 18-year period,' he says about the time he's used his IBM keyboard, 'I have had more computers than I can count or remember, but I have never found a keyboard that compared to the IBM 1391401.' Its main appeal? Exactly what drives the young Ms. Sim nuts: 'The tactile feedback that I get when I type. It feels very firm when I press one of the keys and I can very clearly feel the keys snap back after pressing them,' he says.

    Mr. Abrams, it turns out, is not alone. The world is full of fans of the old-style keyboard. Indonesian entrepreneur Jerry Justianto swears by his IBM PS/2 System 70, from a line that was introduced in 1987, for similar reasons. So does Chris Riemer, a U.S.-based consultant: 'It had just the right degree of resistance,' he recalls, 'and the right amount of click.' Indonesian blogger Budi Putra loves the noise, too, and wishes that keyboard makers would 'create a keyboard sound like the old machines.' Not a bad idea.

    The clicking sound they so love, by the way, is because of the 'buckling spring' mechanism, where the spring buckles under pressure from your finger until a lever hits a sheet below.

    This, according to a review of the IBM Model M keyboards by technology writer Daniel Rutter , not only provides the reassuring sound but also ensures that the user knows when they've actually hit the key: 'When you use a keyboard that doesn't have a good positive click,' writes Mr. Rutter, 'it's hard to tell when you've depressed a key properly.' The buckling spring method, unfortunately, has long been replaced by the 'rubber dome,' where little sticks on the underside of the keys press down on rubber domes laid on a plastic underlay. This is why you don't hear so much clickety-clack in offices these days.

    Of course, not all of us have seen the value of good keyboard action. As Mr. Rutter points out, in the days before mice, we, and manufacturers, tended to give a lot more thought to them. Nowadays, for many of us it's an afterthought, often after spending $100 or so on a fancy mouse. Most of us think nothing of sitting in front of an office computer all day, our fingers dancing across a substandard keyboard that we would never think of replacing for a better one. According to a U.S.-based distributor of refurbished and unused Model M keyboards called clickykeyboards.com: 'The computer keyboard is among the most under-appreciated components of the computer. In reality, the keyboard is the one part of the computer that gets the most physical contact.'

    The passion of Mr. Abrams and others, woke me up to the fact that while we tend to focus on the look of a keyboard, it's about the touch, response, action, whatever you want to call it, of the keys themselves that really matters. If we like the action, we like to type. I've long loved my ThinkPad keyboard, for example; it's probably no accident it was also designed by IBM, back when they owned the brand.

    There are other options, and it's worth trying out a few to see whether they may suit you better than the one you've got. I admire Microsoft's keyboards which are well designed and solid. My latest was a simple affair, less than $15, with reassuringly tough keys and a good clickety-clack response. Sadly, I had to sacrifice that side of things when people I interviewed over the phone started asking what the weird rustling sound was -- turned out it was my typing their answers, the sound of which was getting picked up by my headset. It sounded, apparently, like a ship full of rats scurrying for the exit.

    Instead I've opted for the diNovo Edge from Logitech, a company which has always pushed the boundaries between keyboard and command console. This one is black, sleek and is the first keyboard I've tried that actually connects seamlessly by Bluetooth, as opposed to those that only claim to. It even comes with a sort of stand-alone slot to recharge the keyboard batteries. I'm not usually a fan of extraneous controls, but those on this model are quite useful: a slider you drag your finger along to change volume, and a circular pad you can use to scroll up or down pages with your finger. Not rocket science, but neat. Unfortunately the price isn't: Expect to pay at least $150 for it. Still, it has great action and is about as quiet a keyboard as I've come across.

    Sean Foley, a Laos-based consultant, has also found the Logitech diNovo keyboard the best of the bunch, so much so that he carries his 'to and from the office each day and everywhere,' he says. He's not alone in packing a keyboard: Phil Baker, a U.S.-based technology entrepreneur and columnist, says he carries 'a full-size keyboard around with me because I prefer it over the laptop keyboard. But maybe I'm weird.'
In a minority, yes. But not weird. Given how much time we spend on them, maybe a bit more passion about our keyboards from all of us wouldn't go amiss.

    我認識到的一個事實是：電腦使用者對鍵盤非常在意，說得更具體些，是鍵盤的按鍵。但電腦硬件制造商們卻可能一直沒注意到這點。
就拿49歲的美國商人道格拉斯•阿布拉姆斯(Douglas Abrams)來說吧，他在新加坡經營的業務可能屬于高端──一家名為FirstMeta的網上銀行，向網絡游戲SecondLife的玩家提供信用卡服務。但他的電腦鍵盤可就不是了。這是一個他從1989年起就一直在使用的IBM 1391401鍵盤，那一年他的首席運營長艾琳•賽姆(Aileen Sim)剛滿6歲。但艾琳對這個鍵盤卻不感冒，當她用阿布拉姆斯的電腦演示SecondLife的玩家如何使用FirstMeta推出的信用卡MetaCard時，禁不住對電腦的IBM鍵盤抱怨連連。

    但阿布拉姆斯卻仍對這個鍵盤一往情深：“在過去18年里，我用過的電腦數不勝數，但我從沒發現哪臺電腦的鍵盤能比得上我的IBM 139140。”而這款鍵盤的主要誘人之處恰恰是讓艾琳小姐氣惱不已的地方，用阿布拉姆斯的話來說就是：摁下按鍵后能明顯感覺到它反彈的力道。他說，這些按鍵按上去感覺很硬，人能明顯感覺到按鍵的回彈。

    廣告與阿布拉姆斯有同樣偏好的不乏其人。當今世界上老式鍵盤的“粉絲”還真不少。印度尼西亞企業家杰里•加斯田托(Jerry Justianto)就非常信賴他的IBM PS/2 System 70鍵盤，他從1987年買下一臺IBM電腦后就開始使用這個鍵盤了，喜愛的理由與阿布拉姆斯相同。美國的咨詢師克里斯•雷米爾(Chris Riemer)也是同道中人。他評價自己用過的IBM老式鍵盤時說，它的硬度恰到好處，敲擊時發出的滴答聲不高不低。印尼的博客寫手布迪•普特拉(Budi Putra)也喜歡聽敲擊鍵盤發出的滴答聲，他希望鍵盤廠家能生產出像老式電腦那樣在敲擊時答答作響的鍵盤。這個想法不錯。

    老式鍵盤之所以能發出他們如此著迷的答答聲，要歸因于其“座曲式”結構。按鍵的彈簧在手指的按壓下不斷彎曲，直至彈簧連接的一個杠桿觸及按鍵底部的一層薄膜。

    用科普作家丹尼爾•普特爾(Daniel Rutter)評論IBM Model M鍵盤時的話說，這種結構不僅能使按鍵發出令某些人心曠神怡的答答聲，還能讓打字的人明確知道自己是否已經將按鍵摁到位了。普特爾寫道：如果使用的是一個不能明確發出答答聲的鍵盤，你就難以判斷自己是否已經把按鍵摁到了位。不幸的是，這種“座曲式”結構的鍵盤早就被“橡膠圓點”式鍵盤所取代了。后者的鍵帽下附有小按棒，按鍵被摁下時按棒就會觸動分布在一層塑料薄膜上的橡膠圓點。正因為如此，如今的寫字間里再也難聞一片答答聲了。

    當然，并非所有的人都那么在意鍵盤的好壞。正像普特爾所指出的，在鼠標發明以前，電腦用戶和制造商們對鍵盤要比現在關注得多。而現在，我們許多人常常是在花100美元買了個時尚鼠標后才想起要給電腦配鍵盤。我們大多數人對于整天坐在電腦前辦公已經習以為常，我們日常用的鍵盤很可能質量不佳，但我們卻從沒想過要換個更好的。美國一家專賣翻新和庫存IBM Model M鍵盤的企業clickykeyboards.com稱，鍵盤在電腦各部件中最未得到應有的重視，而它實際上是電腦與人身體接觸最頻繁的部分。

    阿布拉姆斯等人對鍵盤的鍾情使我意識到，雖然我們往往看重的是鍵盤的外觀，實際上真正重要的卻是按鍵的觸感、反應，或隨便你怎么稱呼的那種感覺。如果這種感覺良好，敲鍵盤對我們來說就是樂事一樁。比如說我就一直很喜歡自己ThinkPad筆記本電腦的鍵盤，而如此好的鍵盤設計出自IBM恐怕也并非巧合，我買這部電腦時ThinkPad品牌還為IBM所有。

    其他公司也有些不錯的鍵盤，不妨嘗試一下，看看是否比你現在用的強。微軟(Microsoft)的鍵盤以其良好設計和堅固耐用博得了我的好感。我剛淘汰的就是一個只花15美元買的微軟鍵盤。鍵盤的按鍵結實耐敲，敲擊時還能發出清脆的答答聲。遺憾的是，這一悅耳享受在我進行電話采訪時常常不得不忍痛犧牲，因為被采訪者往往會隔著電話問我那些古怪的聲音是什么，經查證那是我記錄他們回答內容時的打字聲，而我的電話聽筒又起了放大這些聲音的作用。這聲音在電話那頭聽來就像是一艘船上成千上萬只奪路而逃的老鼠發出的叫聲。

    我于是轉而選用Logitech出產的diNovo Edge鍵盤，這家公司的鍵盤越做越像控制臺。這個鍵盤顏色純黑、外形圓滑，是我第一個真正使用藍牙(Bluetooth)技術的鍵盤。它甚至還有一個專門給鍵盤電池充電的插槽。我雖然對電器的各種新奇功能一般不太感興趣，但這個鍵盤的一些小功能卻很有用，比如一個可用手指拖動的音量調節器，以及一個方便你在電腦屏幕上翻頁的圓形旋鈕。這些都算不上什么高科技，但很實用。但遺憾的是這個鍵盤的價格可不實惠，至少要賣150美元。不過它按上去的手感很不錯，而且在我見過的鍵盤中大概是敲擊時最安靜的。

    在老撾工作的咨詢師肖恩•福利(Sean Foley)也認為Logitech的diNovo鍵盤是最棒的，他對這款鍵盤的喜愛程度達到了與之形影不離的程度。隨身攜帶鍵盤的并非只有他一個人，美國企業家兼專欄作家菲爾•貝克爾(Phil Baker)說，他到哪里都隨身帶著一個大號鍵盤，因為他用不慣筆記本電腦的鍵盤。但他也懷疑自己的行為有點怪。

    像他這樣的人確實不多見，但他這種行為卻不能稱之為怪異。鑒于我們每天要與鍵盤打如此長時間的交道，對鍵盤的關注超乎尋常一些恐怕不算有毛病吧。