How do you feel about long keys?

[Infinite north]

I know that some people here hate long space bars, and I am sure that no one likes small control keys. how do you guys feel about the length of tab, shift, caps or backspace. how often do you hit these keys dead center? would you be fine if they got cut down to normal key size and butted up against the alphas?

[audioave10]

My fat fingers like the longer keys although the space bar is plenty as it is most of the time.

[ch_123]

As someone who switches between ISO, ANSI and big-L enter keyboards on a regular basis, I've trained myself to hit those keys at whatever edge is near to the edge of the keyboard (so for things like backspace I'd aim for the right most side, for things like left shift and control I'd hit the left most side) This means that switching between small backspaces and left shifts etc etc doesn't require me to type any differently. The exception to this is enter, for which I have different techniques depending on what I'm dealing with.

[Rajagra]

When I move from a US keyboard to a UK one, I always hit the backslash instead of Enter. Conclusion? I'd be happy with an Enter key the same size as the letter keys. I suspect most touch-typists would too, even if they don't realise it.

[mr_a500]

I like long space bars and small control key (only need one). I like small backspace, big-L enter and small caps.

[washuai]

I find 1 regular key height to be fine for all keys, I don't prefer tall keys.  Really, I guess a VBN centered 3 key wide space bar would do it for me and allow me to hit the alts with my thumbs.  I can hit an XC Alt, but not a <> alt with my thumbs.  Thumb keys require that 1.5 key width, where as the others require regular key width.  
It is more important that there is only one key between the end of home row and the enter, than how wide enter is.  Although, I certainly would not want something on the other side of enter.

[(X "_____")]

I'd personally like the space bar to be about 2/3 the length it is on a "standard" layout, with Ctrl and Alt keys lying under the left thumb in the free space, but I don't type properly and only hit the space bar with my right thumb.

[(X "_____")]

Yeah, it just seems silly that all my left thumb does is occasionally hit Alt or left win when I'm constantly hitting Ctrl with my pinkie. I've tried swapping Alt and Ctrl, but the space bar is too long to make it comfortable.

[ricercar]

Right handed. Both thumbs. Kinesis.

[maetl]

In the case of most long keys, at least those on the right side, a shoulder movement is a shoulder movement and it doesn't bother me how large or small they are. I can still hit them and without any appreciable difference in speed. I am a bit more picky about the size of the keys of the left side though, or rather that they should all be next to the letter keys without anything shoved in between.

The spacebar I find to be far to large. I would like to see something similar to the Japanese layout keyboards, with spacebar the size of about two keys, being hit by the left thumb, and with tab just to the left of it. The right thumb would then take care of super (windows key) and shift or altgr.

[Brian8bit]

My Cherry USB was having problems with my new server and it was refusing to recognise it. So I busted out some cheap PS/2 board I bought a while back for a backup. The enter key is ridiculously huge and they've moved the hash key from where it should be beside the lower portion of the enter key, to after the plus/equal key, of course they've made the backspace key small.... which is an absolute pain in the frigging arse. More awkward than being caught masturbating by your parents. I keep ending up hitting hash instead of backspace. And I need to backspace alot, because for some reason the caps lock indicator led has crapped out and refuses to show whether I have capslock on or off and my sudo password is about 32 characters long and variable case, numerics and punctuation.