I’ve seen a few laptops these days where the touchpad is moved from below the keyboard where it’s been for decades to the right side of the keyboard. I’ve also heard of ergonomic split keyboards before.
Combining these ideas, it’s possible to put a split keyboard on a laptop and have the touchpad in between. My immediate reaction was that this design would be cursed/horrific, and I’m fairly sure it’s not for me, but then I thought of some advantages:
- If the split keyboard argument is to be believed, it’s more ergonomic to have your hands further apart
- Your palms won’t touch the touchpad while typing unless you sometimes have your fingers press keys for your other hand
- If the keyboard/touchpad have some space below them as a wrist rest, then physical mouse buttons might have enough depth towards the middle of the laptop to exist (assuming laptops these days ditched them for mechanical reasons instead of financial ones)
I made a (low effort photo editing) mock up of how this would look in case my description doesn’t give you the idea:
What do you think, is this something that you would prefer in a laptop? Can you think of any other reasons this is good or bad for you? I figure if this is something that someone was going to make, it’s either going to be for desktops where it’s easier to build a prototype, or a platform that releases the specs required for people to make modules for such a laptop - A Framework, if you will 