The case for an Atreus keyboard

Framework Laptop 13
42

Thanks for asking keyboardio about this. I very much like their atreus layout, although I am also a fan of the Corne layout ( my favourite is dactyl, which is obviously not suited for a laptop).
I would buy the Framework laptop tomorrow if the keyboard layout was the same or similar to atreus or corne.
I wonder how many preorders would they need in order to go ahead?
I think that the people that really want this keyboard on a laptop might also be up for crowd funding as an alternative method to try to make this happen.

2 Likes
43

Corne doesn’t have enough thumbkeys for me (I have 8 on my current laptop), and the standard Atreus doesn’t have enough keys on the sides. Something based on Atreus with more keys (at least one more column on each outer side) would be great. Should have as many keys as can fit; fewer keys won’t make the laptop smaller. Would definitely throw money at anything going in this direction regardless though…

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The advantage of lower key layouts is that you can place the whole left & right sets angled to be more ergonomic. They are meant to be used with layers.

Packing in as many keys as possible requires everything to be straight. Which is fine, if that’s your preference, but it seems like more hardcore custom keyboard creators go for ergonomic + layers. And those are the people likely to create the first fully custom Framework layouts.

Which laptop?

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A lot of ergonomic keyboards still have num rows. I’m currently typing this on a Kyria and personally have no problem with cutting the num row and function rows. I think there’s probably better middleground than a keyboard tries to cut as many keys as possible though. You can still angle the keyboard without doing that. Atreus is pretty good, I just personally really don’t like losing the '/" key.

Which laptop?

Thinkpad p52 with a Japanese keyboard and the trackpoint buttons as keys. The smaller spacebar makes the 2 keys on either side fairly comfortable to press with the thumb for 5 thumb keys + the 3 trackpoint buttons just below the spacebar. With a wide mod, I can comfortably press the 3rd key to the right of the spacebar as well, but I don’t currently use it for anything.

Not sure it was a good idea getting used to it though because I’m stuck with buying thinkpads for now and don’t like any of their current models…