They can be bought new from http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/

The added bonus of a model M is that it will drive your co-workers nuts with the clickyclicky!

I’m positive this has less to do with frequency of use or finger pressure than with some chemical reaction, since the plastic on the left-shift key (the one with the hole) is fairly thick. Also, keys that get just as much (if not more) use, such as the spacebar and letters, show virtually no sign of wear.

However, the labels on some of the keys have worn off, making it hard for a non-touch-typist to find which keys are which. Keys hit hardest by this syndrome are A, S, D, F, L, C, V, N, M, comma, period, slash, and Ctrl.

–K

I might take you up on that, actually, depending on the shipping cost. Get in touch with me…logomancer@gBISHOPmail.com (remove clergyman from address).

Also seen it used in reference to stuff like wood-handled gardening tools.

In my case, the wear is that the textured plastic becomes polished shony smooth, then the crappy lettering wears through.

All of my keyboards have the same wear pattern; heavy wear on the space bar, right (thumb) end, then R T I O P (top row) A S D F H L, then B N M, and ENTER, and left shift key, track pad somewhat left of center.

I type very hard and fast. I work with my hands and they are very rough with callous, like deep filligreed fine black lines. On two laptop track pads I wore through the top layer enough that I started getting crazy erratic pointer behavior.

Sometimes the “palm rest” area abrades as well.

Every time I find somebody who says they keep wearing out their keyboards, it turns out that they’re paying less than £20 for them. You simply cannot expect quality at that price. You don’t expect it from your desk or chair or carpet – why would cheap keyboards be any different?

My sweat destroys the labelling on pointing devices in a matter of months, but I’ve been heavily using this model M for almost ten years, and the lettering is still as sharp as the day it was made (according to the label, in 1985). It needs scrubbing with a stiff brush and abrasive cleaner every few years to remove the build-up of grime on the frame, but aside from that you couldn’t tell that it wasn’t brand new.

Once I became a transcriptionist, the same thing happened to my keyboards – holes worn through on my first keyboard. As I look at my current keyboard, e, r, t, i, o, a ,s d, f, c, v, b, n, <, m, totally gone with g, h, l barely visible. No holes on this re-placed keyboard to date :)

I do believe it has something to do with acidity levels as my rings do the same thing – wear through to the point they are so thin, they then break!

I believe the keys on the Model M have lettering which is actually embedded into the plastic so it’s part of the key itself. Other keyboards seem to use some sort of transfer thing that wears or peels eventually.

Or, for the Macintosh user, the original Apple Extended Keyboard.

Mine is over 20 years old, and looks and works as if it just came off the assembly line.

When I got my dual processor G4 Mirror Door Drive Mac, I upgraded to OS X 10.4 and a Griffin iMate ADB to USB adaptor, so that I could continue to use my Extended.

The Extended Keyboard worked just fine. As it does under OS X 10.5.

Real mechanical keyswitches, excellent tactile and audible feedback, superb “feel”. It’s a pleasure to use for hours on end.

Every modern keyboard I’ve used feels like I’m poking at a slab of silly putty.

My keyboard is only worn in one spot, where my thumb hits, I’ve found that I tend to “slide” my thumb along the spacebar whenever I am typing, and I have a tendency to hover my fingers very close to all keys when I’m typing, so it’s likely that I like to slide key to key, in doing so, it’s likely causing a lot of that wear.

The main reason I think this couldn’t strictly be pH or chemical, is that my mouse has a “dell” logo right where my palm rests, and my mouse has basically no wear at all, wehreas my keyboard’s alphabet has wear on every single letter, (m, n, c, l are completely gone).

Also the controls on my car’s steering wheel, I regularly will trace patterns on things with my hands when I don’t even realize I’m doing it, I find that ever car I drive I end up wearing the control buttons down normally around the edges and middle of indentions.

I really think it all plays a small part, but I have to say that I really think that how you “grip” the keys with your fingers has a lot to do with it, even know I feel myself gripping/rubbing/pushing on my key surfaces when I type.

(1) In library school, I was told that George Eastman (Mr. Kodak) tested the pH of all potential employees’ hands by having them leave a handprint on a sheet of metal and waiting to see what happenend. He would only hire people whose hands did not react strongly to the metal.

(2) A presenter at an archives conference once confessed to having hands so “toxic” that he had to wear *two* sets of gloves when handling photographs. He also said he stopped wearing a watch because they were literally destroyed by his skin.

Maybe there’s some fingernail polish remover involved.

I was lucky enough to find an entire box of 40-some Omnikeys back in the 90′s – 101s, 102s, Ultras.

When I was certain I was going to make a living as a Quake marine, my Omni Ultra came along for the ride.

10+ years later, the first one I picked out of the box is still with me, and looks like it did back then – withstanding day-long FPS sessions and the furious frustrated pounding after my virtual death, coffee spills, a monitor being dropped on it, and angry missives to ex-girlfriends.

It now sits quietly, as my audio workstation keyboard, waiting for me to hit the spacebar again and again.

I still have the box of Omnikeys, so if you want a keyboard you’ll have for the rest of your life, let me know – I’m sure they’d like to be adopted, and be happy with whatever punishment you visit upon them until you’re old and grey.

The best keyboard money can buy. Holds up to all kinds of abuse, and replaceable keycaps if somehow you manage to damage those.

On a more serious note, it might just be that those buttons are pushed the hardest – I’d have thought the index finger on the right hand is likely to be the strongest finger, but I don’t know if it’d be that much stronger.