Month: August 2026

Budget Split Keyboards

There is a Corne on Amazon for under £50. It’s more expensive than they are from the Chinese sites, but not by much. This makes the split keyboard life a possibility for normal people, but also probably means I’ll be unlikely to build and sell these at a profit any longer, because I just can’t compete with those prices. I do have one of these boards as a spare, but have not really used it in anger at this point. It does look like a solid choice for a newcomer though, and there are even versions with switches and keycaps for people who don’t have lots of both lying around at home.

The other great consumer board that’s flooding the market right now is the Silakka54. This has basically the same layout as the older Cornes, but with an additional number row. This makes it a slightly less steep learning curve, which might make it more appealing. I think if I was starting again then this is what I would start with, and it’s good to see there are a few options for cases appearing now, which wasn’t true when I picked mine up about a year ago. This is a keyboard I want to spend more time with soon, because I very much like the way it looks and sounds, and the muscle memory from 5 years of typing on Cornes is very much transferable.

Both of these should be available for under £50 as bare bones boards; maybe £20 more if you want switches and keycaps.

There are also plenty of more normal keyboards on the market that are under £20 right now, and which are easy enough to harvest switches and keycaps from. The two I’ve had the most success with are the Ajazz Alice Boards and the Geeky GK65. Pick these up when they are under £20 and you get switches and keycaps, plus a decent enough keyboard to mod at a later date. I’m increasingly finding that this is the cheapest way to get my split boards built, which is definitely not where we were a couple of years ago.

First thoughts on the MacBook Neo

I’ve been using a MacBook Neo for casual computing for a few weeks now, so thought I’d write a few notes about how I’m finding it and what I’m using it for.

This machine is really a joy to type on and to carry round, and it’s exactly what an entry level computer should be like. It feels a lot faster than the specs suggest, and I think if this had existed a year ago then I would have bought one above the MacBook Air.

There are compromises, but that’s ok because I have other computers for running AI models, doing serious work, and that sort of thing. This is for those times when I wouldn’t use another computers, like sitting in the garden typing my journal. I think this is something I would throw in my bag most times I travel, and I think the smaller size would make particular sense when travelling by train. I find the MacBook Air is just too big to comfortably use on those pull-down tables on trains, but I think the slightly smaller size of the Neo might work perfectly.

As far as GeekBench scores go, the surprise to me is that the MacBook Neo does better than all my non-Macs on single and multi-core processor tests. That’s insane for something that is basically a phone CPU in a laptop. It narrowly beats my AI PC, and destroys everything else. This validates my choice that it’s a good replacement for the ThinkPad that I used to throw in my bag for connecting to other computers or just using around the house or outside. I don’t think that machine has actually been switched on since I got the Neo, and I’ve done a lot of outside computing because I’ve been spending the first hour of the day outside before starting work as the weather has been so warm.

The GeekBench scores were:

  • Single core – 2943
  • Multi core – 6983
  • GPU – 30341

My other computers are recorded in GeekBench browser for comparison.

Things I’ve been doing on the Neo are:

  • Writing my journal
  • Some light development work on shell scripts and simple HTML pages
  • Administering all my other computers via SSH and Apple Remote Desktop
  • General web browsing and life admin
  • Watching YouTube
  • Connecting it to a docking station and testing it out with my usual keyboard, trackball and screen

In other words I’ve done a fair few of the things that normal people use computers for. I think this computer isn’t designed for people like me, but I love it anyway and would recommend it to almost anyone who doesn’t game, keeps their number of open tabs to a sensible level, and who doesn’t need to do anything with their computer that they couldn’t do on a recent-generation mobile phone.

Only time will tell how much use this gets, or it it means my Air will get less use, but right now it’s nice to have another option, and one that I hope will form a big part of my mobile computing experience over the next few years.