Chapter 576 - Keyboards

Over time keyboards just like everything else will be worn down.

(A mechanical keyboard will however have a significantly longer lifespan then membrane keyboards)

At some point a key might become unresponsive due to a multitude of factors. Some possible factors include dirt build up, driver issues, or just plain overuse.

One of the most likely keys to break in the case of overuse is the "e" key. It is the letter that appears the most often in multiple languages including English (with a usage rate of 11.2%) and German (with 17.4%).

And that's exactly what happened to my mechanical keyboard. One advantage of a mechanical keyboard is the ability to replace broken switches (the thing under your key caps). Although I found replacements online, I'd need to wait around a month before they'd arrive.

Thus I just decided to swap the e's switch with one from another key. The tool to safely remove switches ironically would've also taken more than a month to arrive, unless I planned on buying one that was way more expensive. So I opted with the brute force method and grabbed two flathead screwdrivers.

Long story short, I failed but the key somehow works again.