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A laptop by default is not suitable for working any substantial length of time due to the fixed coupling between its screen and keyboard. Separating them—so tha

A laptop by default is not suitable for working any substantial length of time due to the fixed coupling between its screen and keyboard. Separating them—so that you can relax while keeping your screen roughly at your eye level and at comfortable distance, and your elbows bent at comfortable 90 degrees (or more)—gets you 80% there in terms of ergonomics. You could carry around a portable display, but that might be a bit of an overkill in terms of cost and bulk. Unlike a display, a portable keyboard is lighter and often smaller than the laptop itself. Modern wireless keyboards have almost no lag, have nice mechanical keys with replaceable keycaps, etc. Working away from a stationary setup, I consider a separate keyboard a must—and particularly a wireless keyboard, since the one thing that reliably breaks on every laptop is physical I/O, especially USB/USB-C ports (and every time plugging/unplugging another accessory brings that closer). Working with a stationary setup you have a detached keyboard anyway, and if it’s wired you don’t really need to unplug it, like, ever, so a wireless keyboard loses a lot of its advantages—though if you have a really large screen and have a lot of leeway for moving your chair around for comfortable work not having cables get in the way might be nice as well.

stavros 3y ago
I find the notion that wires are less reliable than wireless extremely contrary to my own experience.
- jtc331 3y ago
  That’s not what the parent said. The wired connection itself is better, but it has the tradeoff of physical wear and tear and ports that break.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Right, but I count both as reliability, and while I've had wireless connections be flaky tons of times, I haven't had a physical port break yet.
    - strogonoff 3y ago
      Either you mean a desktop machine, or I envy you. Every one of my laptops had developed issues with physical I/O (be it ports, keyboard, trackpad). The one I especially hate is flaky USB ports that make external HDD spontaneously disconnect while being heavily used, like copying many files over (and it’s not a power issue as it happened both while laptop is powered and with HDDs that have their own dedicated power).
      - stavros 3y ago
        Ah, I use a Framework, so if (when?) a physical port goes bad, I can just replace it for $10 or whatnot. I've never had issues like you mention, though. The most flaky removable thing I've encountered is microSD cards, and I don't know if it's the card or the reader, but they tend to only work half the time. I even check them for authenticity of space, so I don't know why they're so flaky.
        strogonoff 3y ago
        My previous laptop had indeed its SD slot borked at some point (part of why I don’t care that my new laptop lacks it—I would just not expect it to work reliably, so why have another dust collection point). My first laptop’s keyboard had very occasionally working keys in the middle (I blame my pianist fingers bashing them too hard)—I count that as physical I/O, though not a port issue. Is it easy to source replacement I/O boards for Framework?
        stavros 3y ago
        Yes, but wireless wouldn't have saved you with the latter.
        strogonoff 3y ago
        Sure, as long as the keyboard is separate (wired or not) bashing it would have saved the built-in keyboard for a rainy day.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  I would not argue that wired is more reliable in terms of connection. It’s just that if you’re working at a laptop then connection reliability competes with wear and tear, ergonomics, and outlier scenarios like “trip on a cable and brick your work machine” (e.g., by spilling coffee or dropping it). In case of a desktop, connection reliability only competes with ergonomics, and to a much lesser extent—I can see myself using a wired keyboard at a desktop, perhaps even a split one (and that’s an additional wire). Anecdotally, I don’t tend to run into connection issues with wireless keyboards—I do with wireless mice, however.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Hm, yeah, laptops are a bit difficult ergonomically. For me, just the hassle of "this is misbehaving again, is it the battery or interference?" is enough to prefer wired everything, but I get your point about wear and tear. Luckily, in USB-C, the springy bit is in the cable, so that's where the wear and tear is. If it stops working, the cable is generally easy to replace.
    - strogonoff 3y ago
      I’ve had many similar issues with ports, to be honest. Just recently had to get the I/O board swapped on an M1 MBP—one day it decided that one of the USB ports wouldn’t connect 80% of the time. It was relatively inexpensive to do officially even without the warranty (around US$60 all in all), and took just a couple of days, to be fair.
      - stavros 3y ago
        Huh, maybe I'm an outlier. Maybe it's the way you remove your connectors? Some people tend to wiggle them side-to-side, I touch the chassis with my thumb and index finger around the USB, and kind of roll my fingers so they put pressure against the chassis. That leads to the removing force vector pointing strictly straight out of the connector, and I've never had a problem with any port.
        3y ago

stavros 3y ago

I find the notion that wires are less reliable than wireless extremely contrary to my own experience.

jtc331 3y ago
That’s not what the parent said. The wired connection itself is better, but it has the tradeoff of physical wear and tear and ports that break.
- stavros 3y ago
  Right, but I count both as reliability, and while I've had wireless connections be flaky tons of times, I haven't had a physical port break yet.
  - strogonoff 3y ago
    Either you mean a desktop machine, or I envy you. Every one of my laptops had developed issues with physical I/O (be it ports, keyboard, trackpad). The one I especially hate is flaky USB ports that make external HDD spontaneously disconnect while being heavily used, like copying many files over (and it’s not a power issue as it happened both while laptop is powered and with HDDs that have their own dedicated power).
    - stavros 3y ago
      Ah, I use a Framework, so if (when?) a physical port goes bad, I can just replace it for $10 or whatnot. I've never had issues like you mention, though. The most flaky removable thing I've encountered is microSD cards, and I don't know if it's the card or the reader, but they tend to only work half the time. I even check them for authenticity of space, so I don't know why they're so flaky.
      - strogonoff 3y ago
        My previous laptop had indeed its SD slot borked at some point (part of why I don’t care that my new laptop lacks it—I would just not expect it to work reliably, so why have another dust collection point). My first laptop’s keyboard had very occasionally working keys in the middle (I blame my pianist fingers bashing them too hard)—I count that as physical I/O, though not a port issue. Is it easy to source replacement I/O boards for Framework?
        stavros 3y ago
        Yes, but wireless wouldn't have saved you with the latter.
        strogonoff 3y ago
        Sure, as long as the keyboard is separate (wired or not) bashing it would have saved the built-in keyboard for a rainy day.
strogonoff 3y ago
I would not argue that wired is more reliable in terms of connection. It’s just that if you’re working at a laptop then connection reliability competes with wear and tear, ergonomics, and outlier scenarios like “trip on a cable and brick your work machine” (e.g., by spilling coffee or dropping it). In case of a desktop, connection reliability only competes with ergonomics, and to a much lesser extent—I can see myself using a wired keyboard at a desktop, perhaps even a split one (and that’s an additional wire). Anecdotally, I don’t tend to run into connection issues with wireless keyboards—I do with wireless mice, however.
- stavros 3y ago
  Hm, yeah, laptops are a bit difficult ergonomically. For me, just the hassle of "this is misbehaving again, is it the battery or interference?" is enough to prefer wired everything, but I get your point about wear and tear. Luckily, in USB-C, the springy bit is in the cable, so that's where the wear and tear is. If it stops working, the cable is generally easy to replace.
  - strogonoff 3y ago
    I’ve had many similar issues with ports, to be honest. Just recently had to get the I/O board swapped on an M1 MBP—one day it decided that one of the USB ports wouldn’t connect 80% of the time. It was relatively inexpensive to do officially even without the warranty (around US$60 all in all), and took just a couple of days, to be fair.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Huh, maybe I'm an outlier. Maybe it's the way you remove your connectors? Some people tend to wiggle them side-to-side, I touch the chassis with my thumb and index finger around the USB, and kind of roll my fingers so they put pressure against the chassis. That leads to the removing force vector pointing strictly straight out of the connector, and I've never had a problem with any port.
      - 3y ago