Curious about what kinds of things I contemplate throughout the day? Read on my friend!

You know how when you’re typing and you hold down a key, that character repeats quickly? An example of this would be holding down the backspace key to delete those last few words you typed. Ever wonder at what point does holding down a key become more efficient than hitting a key as fast as you can? Well I have.

After a few experiments I found I can quickly press the same key about 20 times in 3 seconds. That calculates to 6 2/3 presses per second, or a key press every .15 seconds. Not too shabby in my opinion. Now, I have my keyboard repeat rate set for Frickin’ Fast which “types” about 20 characters per seconds if I hold down a key, or a key press every .05 seconds. Yeah that puts my finger to shame, but the repeat delay is set for one tick shy of Short as Dani Devito which after several minutes of testing I calculated to be roughly a 1/2 second delay. This means that my keyboard does not repeat a key press like a mofo until half a second has passed with a key held down.

With all this data I came to the conclusion that if I need to type more than four of the same character in a row, theoretically it would be quicker to hold that character key down. Of course this is the real world and not Theoreticalville so holding down a key for ¾ of a second is going to be pretty cumbersome and will likely take up more time because I’d be forced to use more keys in order to fix the inaccuracy I’d get with holding down a key to get five characters out of it. But such is life I suppose.