Filco Minila Review (Pictures inside)

[ideus]

Nice board. As you pointed already the shift, the backspace and the space bar are the main concerns. I am pretty sure the user could get accustomed to them. Well, besides not eating we can be accustomed to anything, almost.


Thank you for the review, nice keyboard.

The backspace and spacebar are OK, but that right shift is a killer.

I don't like any of them. The right shift seems to be the worse. BTW, I shifted from a 60% to a 66% board and having arrows and a delete key is a real blessing...

[tbc]

For PC users, the Alt key is a better candidate as the IJKL modifier.  Plus, you can hold it down with your thumbs without leaving home row.  Of course, an actual Fn keys is best, if you have that option available.

This exactly. I'm on Linux and I use left-alt + {ijkl} since years. I recently added alt+u (home) and alt+m (end) after discovering that some were doing that here on GH 

If an actual fn key is best or not depends on where it's located: on my HHKB it is quite far and on most keyboards that have a "regular width" spacebar if the fn key is after:   alt / gui / spacebar / gui / altGr / fn   then 'fn' is quite far too, which is not great IMHO.

The solution of course is to have a narrower spacebar like the Filco minila here: many people say "spacebar is too small" but it's a trade-off... In exchange you get modifiers which are easier to reach.

Does anyone know if the two 'fn' keys (the ones left and right of the spacebar) do send different keycodes? (that is: can they be mapped independently by software?)

fun keys don'r send any signals at all ever. pretty sure this is the same for every keyboard.

[ManxLOLcat]

oh man I would kill myself if I had that space key

how would you kill yourself

With the keyboard itself

[yasuo]

use spacebar with FNkey )

[Tony]

Hmm.... With that tiny right shift, I would mistype all day.

[tbc]

i actually turn my right shift into print screen.  sometimes it comes in handy to have a random screenshot lol.  but ya, I don't use rightshift anyways, so it doesn't bother me; keeping my right hand on my mouse is more important than using two hands to type capitals q a z.

[jchtt]

Does anyone know if the two 'fn' keys (the ones left and right of the spacebar) do send different keycodes? (that is: can they be mapped independently by software?)

fun keys don'r send any signals at all ever. pretty sure this is the same for every keyboard.

Sorry for necroing, but I’m also curious about this. What happens if you make the fn keys work as space? Do they send the same keycode as space or a different one? In that case, one would be able to reprogram the fn layer via software.