A laptop is one of the greatest tools at the disposal of a hacker. They come in all manner of shapes and sizes with all manner of features. But perhaps the greatest limit held by all laptops is their chiclet keyboard. While certainly serviceable, a proper mechanical keyboard will always reign supreme, which is why [flurples] built a laptop around a mechanical keyboard.
Such a keyboard could not fit inside any normal laptop, so a custom machined case was in order. The starting point was a standard Framework Laptop 13. Its open source documentation certainly helped the project, but numerous parts such as the audio board and fingerprint sensor are not documented making for a long and tedious process. But the resulting machined aluminum case looks at least as good as a stock Framework chassis, all be it, quite a bit thicker.
The resulting laptop retains three of the four modular input ports the Framework is known for, but one was sacrificed for a USB-A hub and HDMI port exposed by a custom carrier. Only one of the USB-As is externally accessible, with one used as a mouse dongle hider, and the other for keyboard connectivity.
The keyboard itself uses Kailh Choc Sunset switches, with the PCB resting on o rings for a more consistent typing experience. The key caps come from two sets of caps, with the shift and escape keys being dyed an excellent shade of orange. Sitting on the right hand side below the keyboard is a trio of rotary encoders. Using low profile encoders, the knobs blend neatly into the overall laptop, perhaps being invisible at first glance.
The rotary encoders forced a speaker arrangement redesign. Instead of siting next to the battery where the rotary encoders now are, they are attached to the top cover above the battery. This change required lengthening the speaker connector cables, but otherwise worked extremely well.
If you enjoy the work of laptop case replacement, make sure to check out this Toshiba Libretto get a fresh lease on life with a re-designed case.
Mechanical keyboards: tattoos for your desk—flashy, noisy, and useless for real work. If you want productivity, grab a flat membrane; if you want to annoy everyone else, go clickety-clack your ego away.
Mechanical (especially buckling) spring is way better for production.
We get it, you don’t like mech keyboards. I also agree that loud ones should not be used in a setting that disturbs coworkers.
I prefer mech keybaords at home and am using one to reply. I love the feel.
But I want my keys to be quiet and travel more than one millimeter. I also like them to be concave and have a large gap between each other.
Daniel, exactly. I make way too many mistakes on the non-cupped keys of my laptop, which is one reason I vastly prefer my desktop computer with its separate keyboard. The cupping of the keys let your fingers stay centered on the keys by feel, so you don’t accidentally start pressing adjacent keys. One shouldn’t have to look at the keyboard when typing.
But for quite a bit of people, membrane keyboards put strain on their hands, and there are silent mechanical keyboards, that’s a thing if you bother to do a bit of research.
Exactly, I’m typing this on a (nearly) silent mechanical keyboard. Membrane keyboards are certainly useable, but they are not quite up to the experience of a mechanical keyboard.
What brand and model, please?
Search for silent mechanical keyboard (“silent MK”) on reddit and you’ll find plenty of examples
I’m sorry, I think you’ve confused this website with HateADay. Please go there.
s/all be it/albeit/
prefer Marcin Plaza’s interpretation of this concept, more knobs though
Nice! I like it… I’d go for a thicker laptop or phone if you could simply pop the back off and replace the battery too. What’s another 1/2″ ? Thin isn’t always better.
I agree. At this point we got more than enough of processing power and size. What I would like now is longer battery runtime and proper ergonomic interface.
Plus the ability to use chorded clicks (independent mouse buttons) and more than 1000 cycles of disc rewrite endurance!
My current long-term ‘laptop’-ish build uses low profile mechanical keys.
I say ‘laptop’-ish because it is a weird back-combination.
A lapdock is like a laptop, but without the internal computer, so the keyboard input goes OUT to an external computer, and the video from that computer comes back in to be displayed on the lap-screen. There is often no battery, but likely USB power passthrough.
Mine is conceptually in between, or boh depending on your perspective.
It is like a lapdock, with an internal display port kvm, an internal battery, and an internal low-power computer.
It will provide video input and keyboard/touchpad output, which can go to either the internal Linux machine or be usable as a “kvm cart”.
Musing: I wonder if we will ever get USB-C display port alt-mode from a server IPMI.
They are already doing silly stuff like mini/micro DP connectors in the name of density.
Why not a single USB-C connector that can be video out AND keyboard/mouse/storage input?