Majestouch Ninja

Well I have now reached a new level of geekery with my latest computer-related acquisition. The Filco Majestouch Ninja Tenkeyless, to give it it’s full name, scores high on the hacker scale for several reasons. Firstly, it is a mechanical keyboard, which has the feel and sound of the ‘proper’ keyboards of old. Without noticing it we have settled for soft, squidgy membrane keyboards that have neither satisfying tactile feedback nor pleasing (philistines would say annoying) audible click. I went the whole hog and opted for the Cherry MX Blue switches, which are the most clicky and tactile of the bunch - why mess about.

Added to this, the Ninja badge alludes to the absence of any letters on the tops of the keys - so when viewed from above the keyboard looks to have completely blank, black keys - devoid of all expression, help or clue as to their motives or function. However, just like a true ninja (who unfortunately do not have magical powers - see Mythbusters episodes on the matter), if you look carefully enough you will find their whereabouts because the lettering is very neatly etched (no doubt using ‘frickin lasers’ on the faces of the keys. As this will be used as a standing desk keyboard the letters are fairly useless anyway - so I may as well suck it up and learn to touch type with all the keys.

By now you may have realised that this rambling post is simply a good excuse to try out this new gadget - suffice to say I am thus far very pleased. It goes very well with Vim - an environment where a single click can be the difference between adding a new word and deleting everything above your cursor (e.g. Esc - dgg).

Weirdly the keyboard ships with the Windows keys with logos on the tops of the keys but they provide you with extra ‘ninja’ Windows keys and tool to remove the keys. I can only assume that Microsoft must have some clauses in their license of the drivers that insists on Windows keys being displayed - very odd. Suffice to say - non-ninja Windows keys were removed with alacrity.