If you don't need/want them don't use/buy them and more importantly don't care about them. You could use the same kind of logic on mechs in general, or custom keycaps, or custom keyboards and so on. Not giving a **** is always the better option than complaining about stuff that is 100% preference (like most of the choices/topics/whatever in this community).
On the contrary—seeing a topic that questions the sense of something like an illuminated, animated keyboard, and
not reading and replying to it in a pointlessly "you shouldn't ask questions or express opinions here" way, would be the "better option". In a democracy, that is. If you decide to move to Russia so you can be told what you can and can't inquire or express opinions about, maybe you'll post here about it and let us know how much better it is.
A long time ago, when I was playing Wing Commander 2, I wanted a keyboard with the keys lit because it was nice to play in a somewhat dark room, which made it difficult to see the keys. It would have been a great help if the keys had been lit because every now and then, you needed to press one... I'd look at the keyboard for that because my hands usually weren't already on it... That's how lit keyboards were invented.
No, it's not why they were invented. They were invented because keyboard makers needed a new gimmick to promote sales. Till then, the idea of illuminating something you're not supposed to look at—much less, adding disco effects to it—seemed silly. Then some hardware exec realized, "Hey, people who build custom PCs like stuff that lights up. Why don't we make
keyboards that light up?" So they test-marketed them, to avoid the possibility that they'd be ridiculed and their brand damaged.
But since primates are instinctively attracted to bright, shiny things (apparently because they
remind us of our need for water), people started buying them, even though it made about as much sense as embedding LEDs in the steering wheel of your car.
The illuminated, flashing keyboard thing also capitalized on computer
ignorance. Since the sci-fi movie serials of the '30s, Hollywood has exploited the image of computers as mystifying, super-complicated devices covered with blinking lights, strange controls and
cryptic displays. Fun 'n' fanciful, for sure—but it also had the effect of making whole generations of people
afraid to learn about computers because you had to be a scientist or mad genius to understand them.
And as far as adding little signal lights to a keyboard to avoid learning where the keys are... No one can tell you or anyone else how to use the tools you own. But it's not necessary to "reinvent the wheel" by hunting and pecking, either. Keyboard technology, the computers that keyboards are used to control, and the best ways to use them, are the result of decades of incredibly hard work by incredibly smart people who, in many cases, dedicated their lives to developing those devices and methods.
"Reinventing the wheel" means ignoring all that and deciding to do it
your way. In some cases—for example, in art, music, writing, architecture—a certain amount of "wheel-reinventing" is good, as it opens the way to new ideas that are equally valuable.
But typing, especially on a standard keyboard, has pretty much been innovated out. Insisting on "reinventing" something like that is like
building your own toaster. Yes, it can be done—but if you're not doing it to make some kind of artistic statement, you're just wasting a lot of your present and future time.
Touch typing isn't that hard. If you can walk and talk, those are much harder and more complicated skills than typing. Yes, it takes some time to learn to use a keyboard without looking at your hands. It takes time to learn
any really useful skill. But if you have the patience and long-range vision to do it, you'll save that time over and over for the rest of your typing life.
And of course if gaming's important to you, you'll be a
much better at that too. Watch some videos of professional gamers—how many of
them do you see taking their eyes off the display to see which keys they're pressing? You'll be like a bicycle racer who learns to ride without having to keep looking down at his feet to see which one's up and which one's down. :?)
LOL. Indeed, for the complete effect, you need the console of winky, blinky lights all around you too.
LEDs in a keyboard are just an extreme intent to revamp a simple and practical input device and transform it into something close to an ornament, it is like the travesty version of a keyboard, a keyboard trying to pass as a fancy thing, a working input device in disguise... For some, the keyboard is our daily working tool, for others is a toy that needs some fancy clothes.
While I wouldn't take quite such a draconian stance—in a free society, people can spend their money on whatever goofy things they wish—I agree: When you get to the point where you want to reinforce bad computing habits by adorning your hardware with glitzy distractions, you may want to reexamine how much you're valuing your limited time here on earth.
Backlighting is not a fad. Remember: most people do not own the typical Geekhacker's black-on-black Cherry-profile Moogle-included thick doubleshot PBT Nordic keysets, where any LEDs just serve as decoration. Most people also do not touchtype. Correspondingly - and unsurprisingly - then, mainstream backlit keyboards come with shine-through caps, where the LEDs allow you to - wait for it - see the letters in the dark.
I, too, don't get the fancy-caps thing. (Spending hundreds of bucks on a little piece of plastic with a scary face carved into seems like a neurotic fetish.) But if you use a keyboard how it's
designed to be used, you don't need your letters to glow in the dark any more than a concert pianist needs the names of the notes printed on the keys of a piano.
