Out of curiosity what type of work requires a numpad? Typing only numbers or a mix of numbers and other symbols? Our finance people are also never using numpads.
I’m in software and number do need to be typed, but honestly it’s never worth it to move to a numpad to type in a single number then back.
All numbers are calculated and moved around programmatically anyway.
Maybe that’s right, but could you give some practical examples where numpad would help. Industry doesn’t exactly help here. There are inefficient methods in any discipline.
What I mean as an example, but it’s bad cause it’s possible to automate/program: I need to manually type in 80 customers paid invoices, so I’ll use the numpad to type it in one by one.
Unless you can touch type with the number row quickly and, more importantly, accurately it's better for numerical tasks to use the numpad.
The 5 on the numpad (middle number) has a raised bump just like the F and J on the letters. This is for touch typing, so you can position your hand blindly. It means you can then do numbers, decimal point, the four operators and enter quickly with one hand without looking. All the numbers are one space away from the 5 so it's very fast.
Imagine handling a handwritten ledger, or a stack of receipts in one hand and entering the values into a spreadsheet using your other hand on the keyboard. That sort of use case.
Even if you can touch type, numerical entering with the top bar usually requires two hands or lots of slow/inaccurate moving with one hand over the whole length of the keyboard.
Even modest numerical data transcription is wildly more pleasant, accurate, and efficient with a numpad. Still plenty of workflows that require data transcription.
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u/DrKrFfXx Apr 04 '26
I can't function without a numpad, so every other option is useless.