Do you even 10-key, bro? Our homage to the classic keyboard standard

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

While going through a full, cleaning sweep of my home office-something I know I'm not alone in doing lately-I had to blow dust off quite a few forgotten items. At my house, this included a range of electronics I haven't used in years: an Amazon Echo Dot, an Ouya, a burner phone full of discontinued Google apps, and so on.

Beneath all of those was a surprise: an extra 10-key pad for my wireless, daily driver keyboard. This model, a wireless Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard, breaks its 10-key portion into a separate, wireless piece, which I'd apparently put away and forgotten about. I mentioned it in the Ars "staff" chat channel for funsies, with some sarcastic version of "who even uses these things anymore?"

What followed was an explosion in 10-key-number-pad opinions that I hadn't anticipated but should have expected. This is Ars Technica, after all. If something accepts any form of electrical current, we can find a way to make it a "stop everything, let's hash this out" conversation piece. And hash we did, with staffers recalling decades of 10-key anecdotes and memories.

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