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The Goldtouch USB keyboard and the Dell Inspiron 700m (12” ultraportable) are the two keyboards that I have used the most. The rest were equally new to me. Average words per minute were about 5 wpm less than the above scores. The MacBook Pro average wpm was 130.3 and the IBM ThinkPad was an average 130.7 wpm.

Although I ran these tests several times, I consistently did very well with the Apple MacBook Pro and if I had more time with the unit, I think I could have broken the 140wpm barrier. What was definitely interesting was that the basic Apple Standard USB keyboard did surprisingly well. The Apple Standard USB did not feel anywhere as good as the numbers would suggest, but I don’t think the Mac implementation of Java is somehow less accurate. My guess is that the Apple Standard USB keyboard isn’t seen as a high-end keyboard because of fatigue. For example, the Goldtouch USB was only an average performer but the split ergonomic design makes it easier on the wrists.

The somewhat disappointing results from the Northgate Omnikey Ultra-type mechanism keyboard may be explained by the age of the keyboard. As it had been in storage for two years, it didn’t seem to have the nimbleness as I once thought it did. I unfortunately don’t have a good-condition Omnikey Ultra keyboard or the budget for an Avant Stellar

One caveat is that IBM has keyboards manufactured by three different suppliers: NMB, Alps, and Chicony. When it comes to the T42/T43 line of Thinkpads, the NMB model is almost universally considered to be superior to the Alps version.

By now, the Apple guys were becoming suspicious with me randomly walking up to different PCs and loading up typingtest.com instead of the flashy iLife 06 or iWork 06. One of the Apple staff members started asking me what I did… whether I was a coder or not.

I’ve seen enough movies, when the heat is on you’ve only got 30 seconds to walk away. So that’s the only benchmark we were able to run. Hopefully we’ll be able to secure a MacBook Pro in February when they’re available at retail to run a real head-to-head against a Thinkpad.