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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff. From how Stuff works a brain stuff,

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Speaker 1: it's Christian Seger here. If you spend a lot of

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Speaker 1: time using a computer, you have undoubtedly noticed that over

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Speaker 1: time some of the letters on your keyboards start to disappear.

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Speaker 1: That leads to the question which keys on a keyboard

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Speaker 1: tend to wear out the fastest. Since keys wear out

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Speaker 1: because of use, it's logical to assume that the keys

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Speaker 1: that wear out the fastest are the ones we use

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Speaker 1: most heavily. So which ones are they? Back in the

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Speaker 1: days before computers, when typewriters and type setting machines were

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Speaker 1: used to put words on paper, that was a fairly

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Speaker 1: easy question to answer. As a trade publication called The

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Speaker 1: Inland Printer noted, back in it was widely accepted that

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Speaker 1: the most used key on keyboards was the space bar,

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Speaker 1: followed by the letter E. Some sources still adhere to

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Speaker 1: that convention. A Microsoft product marketing off she told Business Insider,

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Speaker 1: for example, that the most used key was the space bar,

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Speaker 1: followed by the E and then the backspace key. But

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Speaker 1: if you really want the definitive answer, the source best

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Speaker 1: equipped to give it might be someone who replaces computer

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Speaker 1: keys for a living. Patrick Halcrow is owner and operator

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Speaker 1: of Laptop dash keys dot com, which supplies keys and

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Speaker 1: parts needed, along with repair instructions to people who need

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Speaker 1: to fix their broken laptop keyboards. Halcrow explains in an

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Speaker 1: email that these days, habits have changed. That's because a

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Speaker 1: lot of people who were once casual computer users have

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Speaker 1: switched to using smartphones and tablets with touch screens to

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Speaker 1: write emails and check out social media and videos, and

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Speaker 1: the people who still use laptops are mostly either workers

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Speaker 1: or computer gamers. As Halcrow says, gamer mostly order replacements

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Speaker 1: for the W, A, S, and D keys, as well

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Speaker 1: as the arrow keys. That's because these specific keys are

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Speaker 1: used for player movement in RPG type games as well

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Speaker 1: as vehicle control in driving type simulators. People who use

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Speaker 1: desktop and laptop computers for work, in contrast, tend to

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Speaker 1: replace the vowel keys A, E, I, O, and you,

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Speaker 1: and the space bar and the arrow keys, which Halcrow

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Speaker 1: said are the keys pressed most often when typing. According

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Speaker 1: to Halcrow, people tend to replace keys mostly because of aesthetics.

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Speaker 1: They don't like the look of a keyboard where some

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Speaker 1: of the letters are worn off, and not because of

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Speaker 1: wear and tear on the underlying mechanism. When there is

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Speaker 1: actual damage, he says, it's not because of wear and tear,

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Speaker 1: but rather it's accidental. Think of your pets knocking a

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Speaker 1: laptop off a table or children breaking off the keys,

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Speaker 1: and this is the case with all accidents, breaking the

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Speaker 1: actual key mechanism is more unpredictable. Today's episode was written

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Speaker 1: by Patrick J. Keiger, produced by Dylan Fagan, and for

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Speaker 1: more on this and other topics, please visit us at

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Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com.