You get off mine. I learned typing on a basic typewriter, but I learned numeric input on a numeric keypad. I also learned the difference between a keypad and a keyboard. (Hint: a typewriter has the latter, not the former.)
I’ve never used it, so I’m not as fast using it. My younger sister uses it all the time, but, in her job, she used to key in a lot of numbers. I didn’t. Also, I learned to touch type on a manual (not electric!) typewriter, so I don’t feel that I’m losing all that much efficiency by not re-training myself. And now I’m old.
None of my currently-used keyboards host a number pad. Laptops are like that. I learned typing long ago on manual Underwoods - my 8th grade typing class was interrupted by news of JFK’s shooting. I mastered typing on KSR-33 teletypes requiring about 50 pounds of pressure per keystroke and I reached 80 WPM on that. Yes, I could break doorknob locks with a mere wrist-twist. I think I last used a numeric keypad around 2003. I don’t miss it.
I use both about equally. When I started at a metro newspaper (it was actually two papers each with their own ownership a shared circulation department) in the 90s in the circulation department, one of my tasks was to enter press runs, which would entail entering a combination of letters and numbers. What I had to enter would change daily depending on the number of advertisements, size of the edition, etc. My boss asked me why I was entering the numbers using the top row and not the keypad. I told her it was just easier and faster that way. And if it had been just numbers, I would have used the keypad, but when you’re entering letters also, the keypad slows you down.
I don’t have a keypad, so I don’t have a choice. But when I used a desktop computer more often I would use the keypad to put in any number with more than 5 digits.
I just got a new laptop, and it doesn’t have the number pad my old one had. I miss it very much. I don’t really touch type, but I don’t need to look at my keyboard often. Numbers, on the other hand, require change of posture to see them.
Cool? I got a new (refurbished) LAPTOP, not a notebook or a Chromebook.