Dang, I wear my keyboards out way to fast for letters to actually rub away…
It’s not the lack of painted letters but rather, the letters often get a new clearcoat of what ever container laden liquid I happen to be in the process of pre-swallowing, as I mentally digest things like…
“penis ensues”
:dubious:
WASD
My Apple keyboard is 6 years old. Nothing is the least bit faded. About once a year I take the keys off, wash them in soapy water, rinse and replace. So not only are they unfaded but the same clean off white they were at birth.
My WASD and space bar keys are all metal-plated. (That’s not really why I bought the thing but it does add a certain bling factor. :D)
I did just notice my work computer’s S, D, C and V letters are wearing off, too. Dunno why though as it’s not like I use those letters and more than the others, but given the build quality of the rest of the computer, it isn’t terribly surprising.
S is completely gone from my gaming pad; everything else is nearly in perfect shape. I guess I back up a lot.
Dell Inspiron laptop, about 4 years old. N and M are completely gone; C and L are on the way out. (The N/M thing drives MrWhatsit crazy. He is not a touch typist.)
Toshiba laptop, at least three years old. No letters worn at all, and hardly any of the keys are particularly shiny. Weirdly the shiniest one (apart from the right hand side of the space bar) is H. I can’t think why.
You know I have to admit this is pretty funny
I wish I had thought to say it, of course next time I ask this question I will have 
Backing away from all the fights? 
Tactically retreating.
My keycaps are all in good shape, but my mouse and the edge of my keyboard where my right hand tends to rub it just below the space bar (yes, I have lousy hand posture) are actually losing the silvery color they used to have.
With CRT monitors, they used to light up my desk in just enough light that you could read the keyboard without a problem. However, LCD monitors do not illuminate even a tenth as well.
For a beige keyboard that hasn’t been too much of a problem, it’s mostly reflective; but for a black keyboard, which are increasingly the default, it’s absurd, and I can’t read them in the dark at all. As I always work in the dark in the evenings, I am disappointed in this development.
Mine’s a couple of years old… all the letters are readable, but there’s a smooth spot on my otherwise textured space-bar.
I don’t know exactly how old my office keyboard is, but it’s an IBM-branded one that I took apart and washed about ten years ago.
The bottom-right quarter of E, A and S are mostly gone. There’s a long shiny patch worn on the spacebar, and F3’s got some wear going on. (seems to be a popular key on our mainframes)
Other than that, the keyboard looks and works like new. Wish I’d known how good it was going to be when I bought it - I’d have stashed a couple away as spares.
This keyboard was assigned to me, so I don’t know how old it is. Seven of the letters are worn enough to be missing or illegible. Two more are half gone, but still recognizable. MIA are A, E, R, I, L, K, & N. O and S are going. D, B, and V are showing wear, but should hold up for awhile.
It really only bothers me if I look. If I just arrange my fingers and type, I have no problem.
This laptop is only a little over a year old, and as far as I can tell, none of the letters are faded yet. I do apparently use my right thumb for the shift key (nearly exclusively, I think!), and the right hand side of the bar is all smooth and shiny!
My old Sinclair Spectrum (48K) had the D, F and G keys worn to a mirror-like smoothness from years of playing Daley Thomson’s Decathlon. 
A, S, E, R on my home computer, with the A and S completely gone.
I once had a keyboard at work where the letters were so worn off that other people couldn’t use it (didn’t bother me – I touch type). I’ve gotten a new one, but the S is slowly wearing away.
At work, I noticed that the people who complained about their keys missing labels tended to be women. So I think the cause is either the nail polish or perhaps the nail polish remover.
My WASD not only lost their typeface but got grooves in them from my fingernails. Particularly A, as I tend to dodge left when fired upon, and the finger-to-key angle is the greatest.
I took some keys from the right hand side of the board and swapped them over.