10 ms·

I think a lot of people just haven't learned to touch-type the top number row. It was required for me to graduate to the 6th grade in 2002 to get at least 35 WP

I think a lot of people just haven't learned to touch-type the top number row. It was required for me to graduate to the 6th grade in 2002 to get at least 35 WPM / 90% accuracy on the typing test, and there were a bunch of numbers in there so using the type row naturally was an important part of this. I suspect people who have had similar experiences would never use the numpad. The context switch alone causes huge amounts of downtime.

trashtester 5y ago
For me it's the other way. I have no issues embedding nubers in the touch typing when typing normal text, but if there are only numbers, accuracy will go down, unless I bring my center down to the asdf line, which slows me down a lot. I also did practice my musscle memory for the numpad in a similar way to touch as part of typing scientific data (back in the 90s). After a couple of weeks of that, my speed on the numpad would be at least twice as high as when typing numbers on the main keyboard. Also, accuracy was high enough that I could reliably trust the output even when not looking at the result (very close to 100%), which is critical for many use cases that involve numbers. Even if I spend 99% of my time on the regular keyboard now, if I have to spend more than 5mins typing only numbers, I will feel really frustrated without a numpad. Then again, I tend to use the laptop keyboards quite little anyway, mostly only while travelling or when in a meeting room. In the office, there is a dock and at home I use a desktop.