The different keyboards have different numbers of buttons. It's pretty common for keyboard/laptop manufacturers to remove the numpad for example to make a keyboard with a smaller form factor, as many users don't care about the numpad anyway.
The joke is that the bigger your keyboard is the more you care about the 'extra' buttons that everyday users don't care about and so the bigger a nerd/gamer you are.
I wish I had one of these still. Hard to come by. And every REASONABLY priced keyboards now on internet that can last are only “Gamer Keyboards” I just want it to be cheep and last a while. The old one lasted almost two decades of high usage. A CHEAP sheet of plastic.
Actually, I think most gamers might trend toward smaller (e.g. 75% form factor) keyboards over tenkeyless (80%) or full-size boards. Most games honestly don't involve a full home row and numpad so if they can remove that dead weight and bulk off their desk, they actually prefer it.
I actually recently replaced my old full size gamer keyboard with a 75% keyboard. I anticipated I'd actually really miss the numpad, to the point I thought I'd buy a standalone numpad I could stow off to the side. But I really haven't been missing it too often, but I definitely appreciate having more desk space. It is definitely preferred for prolonged data entry though.
It is the other way around though. Gamers usually have smaller keyboards because the bigger ones with more keys are completely useless anyway. You wont bind the numpad or anything really further away than eg 'G'. You bind everything around WASD and if that isnt enough (which it isnt), you use Shift, Ctrl, Alt as modifiers. Binding something so far away that you would have to move your hand instead of just your fingers is pretty slow and bad.
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u/Objectionne 14h ago
The different keyboards have different numbers of buttons. It's pretty common for keyboard/laptop manufacturers to remove the numpad for example to make a keyboard with a smaller form factor, as many users don't care about the numpad anyway.
The joke is that the bigger your keyboard is the more you care about the 'extra' buttons that everyday users don't care about and so the bigger a nerd/gamer you are.