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Hardware

Ergonomic Laptop Keyboards? 162

Posted by timothy from the say-it's-possible dept.
simonwagstaff writes: "I read with interest Hemos' recent review of the "Evolution" split keyboard, and it reminded me of a long-time quest, namely the holy grail of laptop input devices: a comfortable keyboard. Is there even such a thing? As I see it, three basic things affect how comfortable a keyboard is: key pitch, key travel, and actual arrangement on the typing surface. (the first and third are closely linked, since by things like eliminating a number pad are what let laptop keyboards fit a reasonable space at all)."(Read more below.)

"To that end, I wonder if any laptop makers (perhaps catering to those with wrist difficulties like I am on the edge of) offer laptops with keyboards somewhat like those on the MS Natural, or the old Apple Ergonomic keyboard, that is, with some degree of split for better wrist angle. In fact, in cramped places, it would be really handy even for those with fine wrists, to be able to angle in somewhat more -- on my last airline flight I realized that there is somewhat more elbow room than straight-forward room, at least in the cheap seats.

Ideal, perhaps, would be something like the Kinesis keyboard but simply integrated into a laptop -- it might be a little thicker, but the change would be a boon for certain of us.

Hope your Slashdot readers have some suggestions on this front. Even a small "ergo" keyboard along the lines / size of the famous Happy Hacker keyboard would be ok, at least for moderately long trips ..."

One problem with this is that hands and preferences vary so greatly; does anyone have recommendations on comfortable laptop keyboards, by brand or model? For now, I carry an IBM external keyboard in my car.
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Ergonomic Laptop Keyboards? More

Ergonomic Laptop Keyboards?

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  • DELETE ELECTRIC MONK'S POST! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you click the link he includes at the bottom. It runs a script that fills your screen with gay porn!

  • Re:Sholes had a reason for QWERTY (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Not quite as amusing as the way space shuttle solid rocket boosters ended up being the same in diameter as the width of an ancient roman war chariot"

    This is DEFINITELY an urban legend. And you apparently belive it to be true. You just completely discredited your argument.

  • Good Laptop Keyboards (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been looking at laptops lately, with an eye toward ergonomic concerns. Haven't looked at the Apple keyboards, but of the PC compatibles, I find the keyboards on the Sony XG series to be the most comfortable. Followed in rough order by those on the Winbooks, those on the Sony FX series, and those on the HP laptops.

    In my opinion, a lot of this rash of RSI injuries is a result of the widespread use of bubble membrane keyboards. The older spring-based switches used on keyboards seemed to be far less prone to injuring the users. A bubble tends to cause the user to increase pressure up to the point at which the bubble collapses, causing the key (and finger) to bottom out with maximum velocity on the PC board before making contact. The spring-based keyboards had the property of exerting a fairly constant pressure until a switch made contact, at which point the user could release the key without ever having "hit bottom" against any hard surface. It's interesting that a sharp increase in people suffering from RSI injuries seemed to occur only a few years after the bubble membrane keyboards were introduced.

  • Much more to a keyboard (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The most important thing for me is the actual feel of the key. This differs for people, but for me, a key should have a fairly light pressure for the first couple of mm, followed by a pressure "click", followed by a fair amount of aftertouch with increasing pressure.

    A curious side topic is ergonamic mice. Lots of companies put a lot of effort into making nice-feeling keyboard. Lots of companies put a lot of effort into making comfortable shaped mice. I have never in my life seen a mouse where the buttons have any aftertouch, let alone a healthy feel.

    Note on terminology: The term "aftertouch" comes from piano keyboards. It refers to a key moving some distance, activating, but then still having some distance to move, so your fingers don't hit a solid surface at the bottom.

  • that's 275$ not 175$

    Not quite. You can get them for $189 here [safecomputing.com] (sure, it's not "$175", but it's far from "$275").

    Alex Bischoff
  • Definitely too low. Given that I used to be able to do 100 on a *manual*, I am unwilling to believe that a 30% improvementby a professional with an electric keyboard would be exciting . . .


    *smirk* But he mentioned dvorak. Maybe that's the record for that over-rated and over-hyped monstrosity :)


    hawk

  • > Then he failed in one or other of those tasks. The most common letters
    > used in English are ETAIONSHRDLU - in decreasing order of frequency, a
    > quick perusal of the QWERTY keyboard reveals that these aren't 'as far
    > frm one another as possible' after all.

    No, it doesn't show that. The keys are in columns, and the first time
    that any of the letters you list appear in a previoiusly used column is H
    . . . this means a minimum of three other bars between any pair
    of most commonly used keys.


    Besides, as pointed out elsewhere, it's the frequency of pairs, not
    of the raw letters, that matters.


    When I used to do 100wpm on a manual, I could have gone faster, but
    had to slow down over the collisions.


    While I'm meandering, Mark Twain was the first author to submit a
    manuscript by typewriter.


    hawk


    btw, who was the low-wattage, humor impaired fool who modded down the
    rural legends post? That was one of the funniest things I ever
    saw on slashdot (and has a good chance of *becoming* an urban legend . . .)


    Final twist: there should be a meta-moderation rating of "funny"--to cover
    the case that the moderation is so clueless that it evokes laughter . . .

  • IBM included a spare with my A21p.


    OK, it turns out they should have included a spare cover for those contacts on the top of the screen housing, and fastened the lower pcmcia eject button properly, but what the heck . . . :)


    hawk

  • Recently I had occasion to use an old old laptop of my Dad's (a Compaq Contura 430c); the keyboard on it is about ten times better than the keyboard on my iBook. Weight can't be the reason, because they're both about the same weight.

    Just a data point.

  • Interesting to see the inventor won an award [slashdot.org] (near the bottom), yet none of their new laptops seem to offer that folding keyboard. Apparently named TrackWrite, but it seems to me they just called it the ThinkPad folding keyboard...?
  • I like to bind the key that says "caps lock" to be another Control key. That's where control is supposed to be (it's there on VT100 keyboards, and on Sun's keyboards for their SPARCStations). I don't use caps lock, so I got rid of it from my keyboard. As an emacs user, having a conveniently placed control key is really nice. (It's nice for all the zillions of other programs that use emacs-like editting functions, too.)

    BTW, the best program for messing with your X keymap is xkeycaps. It gives you a handy GUI for doing stuff so you don't have to waste your time learning xmodmap syntax until you learn it without trying from seeing it often enough.
    #define X(x,y) x##y

  • I've always wondered why on earth all these laptop manufacturers seem to INSIST that those two Windoze keys on your keyboard are such a necessity.

    Even on less than full-sized keyboards on ultra-portable mini-notebooks they insist that these keys serve some useful function. Only IBM's notebooks get it right - no windows keys!


    --
  • While many laptop makers put fold-up 'feet' on their 'books, a (used) Compaq Armada I just bought has a very novel solution for the issue of key travel:

    The notebook in question is the Armada 7380DMT. The key travel issue is solved bu having keys that have as much travel as a desktop keyboard, which places the keytops 4-5mm above the deck of that laptop. This would interfere with the screen closing under normal circumstances -- compaq solves this by a pully system in the screen cam mechanism that relaxes the springs in the keyboard as the screen closes. They fall down lower than the deck and don't impact the screen, and when it is opened, they pop up and give you full travel.
    .
  • My girlfriend had a real problem with RSI on her wrists. She switched to Dvorak and things got a lot better.

    WRT mechanical typewriters and ae, rt, io, etc, if you type on a mechanical typewriter, you'll see that it's actually quite hard to type two keys with adjacent fingers of the same hand in quick succession. One would have to take a close look at a very old mechanical typewriter, or maybe read the patent application, to figure out why QWERTY was chosen.

  • The nice lucite apple keyboards seem to be highly susceptible to key swapping, as is the keyboard on the Apple Titanium. I haven't tried swapping the keys on my Sony VAIO yet.
  • Oh yeah! I loved those butteryfly thinkpads. I never owned one myself, only got to work on them. I still would like one (the higher end the better of course) to tote Linux around with me... Putting wheels on full size towers is not my idea of "portable" :)

  • IBM's Thinkpad had that in the era of 486's and sub 100Mhz Pentiums.
  • As I run Linux exclusively on my machines, as I was shopping for a laptop I was in the market for hardware.. not platform. I looked around at all the machines... even apple.

    It eventually came down between a Sony Vaio, a Compaq 1700, and the Apple PowerBook Pismo. The greatest deciding factor was that it had the best laptop keyboard i've ever seen.. infact, after using the keyboard for several months and using my friend's Compaq 1700... I was so glad that I had gotten my powerbook.

    Sorry to sound a like a commercial, but it really is the best IMHO; and you get firewire :)

    It is also great to have a PowerPC chip... good to get experience with other architectures.. although this can be a pain at times (some stuff doesnt run, usually due to endianess)

    If you don't need windows and care about your hands, i'd say go for it.

  • I'm two weeks into using a laptop (Dell) fulltime and the keyboard is not the horror I was expecting. I've still got lots to get used to, but the keys and the hand positions seem to work well.

    What I'm not liking so far is the mouse / tablet / joystick stuff. Maybe I'll grow to like the thumb tablet pointer device. But for now I'm using an external mouse -- and the tablet just generates noise, errors. Let me turn it off.

    Oh, and the Ctrl-Alt-Del gesture sucks on my laptop. Why do we still have to Ctrl-Alt-Del? Why not offer other ways to turn it on?

  • See this page [pckeyboard.com] for a buckling spring keyboard, like the original IBM PC keyboards. They used to sell the IBM 42H1292 keyboard, but it appears that they finally exhausted the stock on that model.
  • I really like my IBM T20 keyboard. They keys have a great feel and, though I was prepared to hate it, I found I like the "nub" mouse much better than touch pads.
  • I had some RSI problems that finally forced me to look for alternative keyboards. I tried the Microsoft ergo keyboard (blush) and the problems went away within a few days. Granted, my problems weren't severe and solutions will be different for different people, but for me the M$ keyboard worked. Now, if they could just make the keys less spongey.
  • She never said what exactly keeps your eyes in good shape

    My doctor reccomends periodically focusing on objects in the distance. Finally, a medical reason to have a window office. Now, if I could just get an office.

  • Interesting, I've never done such a test, so I just did. Started my timer, and started pounding:

    After one minute had passed:

    arcade@lux:~$ wc endaentest
    4 149 745 endaentest

    Of course, there were some typing errors, and the formatting sucked (4 lines ;) - but still. Also, I type in norwegian - I don't know if the mean norwegian word is shorter than the mean english word. If it is, that may explain why I managed to rack the speed to 149wpm. :-)

    Also, note that in that, there was absolutely _NO SENSE_ in what I wrote. Of course, it was words, and they were in sentences - but I didn't type something very interesting. :-)


    --
  • Except that with a smart enough machine, you could be able to dictate at about 200 wpm. No, you couldn't dictate code, but you could dictate business memos that fast. Anything with predictable content that could allow some automated error correction. So speech could have some advantages over keys for power users.

    But that doesn't have anything to do with your real point, which is that "The scheme of 100 or so keys arranged in ready proximity to the fingers" is a good idea. And this can't be disputed. The only objections are that those keys could be better layed out, and should accept chorded input.
    --
  • they don't need to fold the keyboard anymore because the screen is now the widest part of the laptop, and since notebooks close like clamshells, the keyboard and screen area have to be same size, and the screens are big enough for a full size keyboard (minus number pad)
  • Someone back in the mid 90's made a laptop with a split keyboard that folded up in the middle, i.e. two different halves that each were anchored on the outside edge. this allowed for the keyboard to be folded up almost vertically, with each half on the sides of the laptop. it was really nice to use, felt like holding a ball in your hands or something.

    there are some benefits to working in a laptop repair depot; you see many cool things. I think the manufacturer was either Sager or Twinhead, but that's just my guess.

  • The Kinesis Ergo [kinesisergo.com] Contour Classic is the best keyboard I've ever found. For $175, you get full hardware level remap and macro, an intelligently arranged keyboard (that looks science fiction; it has 12 thumb keys), with an overall contour shaped for the range of motion of your hands. I got mine on a doctor's recomendation and have loved it ever since.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I'm assuming this is a typo, because 130 wpm would be something along the lines of just slamming your open palm on the keyboard over and over. The fastest typist in the world hits 138 WPM, and that's on a Dvorak keyboard.

    As for the rest of your post: hear, hear! I totally agree.

    Cheers,
    levine
  • The trick with the red nipple is to set the tracking high enough and to be gentle - don't push down on it, just give it enough pressure to catch your finger on the rough surface. And when it wears down, replace the thing! Makes all the difference in the world.
  • Google says: http://www.compu-lock.com [compu-lock.com]

    I couldn't find them on IBM's own site. Also, there seems to be some mention of alternative trackpoint caps, but haven't found where to buy them.

  • Actually, the Titanium PowerBook G4 is its own heatsink. There's a heat pipe connecting the CPU to the titanium shell. For those not in the know, a heat pipe works through the evaporation and condensation of an internal fluid. The fluid evaporates at the hot end, condenses at the cold end, and is drawn back by capilliary action to the hot end. The result is a pipe with an effective thermal conductivity much, much higher than copper (which is pretty damn good to begin with).

    The PowerBook G4 does have a fan, but it almost never comes on in normal use (or so I'm told--I'm still drooling over one, and I'm waiting for the revised model due out in July).

    Of course, that's all off-topic. To bring it back on topic, you might want to take a look at the PB G4 keyboard, which is semi-flexible, and held rigid to the frame via a few magnets. Very nice engineering.
  • That's because running Aqua puts a serious load on your CPU. I know just using the GUI for mundane navigational tasks puts my CPU (a 233 MHz G3, I admit) at about 30% load.

    Try logging in as "console" (or was it ">console"?), and see if the fan comes on.

  • i find the most important difference between keyboards if i'm doing a lot of typing is:

    RUBBER KEYS vs SPRINGS

    when i used a rubber-keys keyboard, i started developing tendonitis, and waking up with pains shooting through my wrist. since i've switched to a spring-based keyoard (a trusty old apple adjustable), the pain has gone away, and i can keep typing. when i go back to the rubber keys, the pain soon returns.

    one of the better spring based keyboards was the original IBM PC-XT keyboard - you could type on that thing all day without getting sore. apple made a really good adjustable keyboard (split angle down the middle is adjusts) - this one works great.

    alas - price concerns force almost all manufacturers to sell based on 'lowwest price is the law' - and the move generally to rubberized keyboards - but this is going to cost a lot of people in the long run -- with their wrists.

    johnRpenner.

  • Well maybe but...
    It's virtually impossible to try every keyboard on the market to see which one fits you. Just a few seconds banging on the key in a store will not tell you anything. You have to live with the keyboard for a day to two at least to know weather it fits you or not. So what are you supposed to do.

    Hey I have an idea. Why not ask a few thousand people which use keyboards heavily and see if there is a consensus.

    Let's see now... Where can I find a few thousand people who use keyboards heavily.

  • On egronomic keyboards and the like... (Score:5)

    by Trumpet ( 42631 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @04:44PM (#196258) Homepage
    If you look at the message subjects, you'll find the single most important and fundamental truth of ergonomics.

    We're all built differently.

    There is no single solution. There is no solution that will work for more than a certain percentage of the population. Furthermore, when you start to push your limits, the percentage that a given solution works for drops drastically.

    Let's apply this specifically to keyboards.

    If you use a keyboard for an hour or two per week, you can probably get away with almost any keyboard on the market. If you use a keyboard an hour a day, then some general purpose keyboards won't work for you. Others will. If you use a keyboard eight hours a day (or more!), then you are pushing the limits of what your hands and wrists can sustain, and will have to find the _precise_ ergonomic solution that works best for you. In other words, you have to go out and try as many keyboards as you can to find the one that causes the least problems ***FOR YOU***!!! The guy beside you might have stronger forearm muscles, narrower shoulders, double-jointed knuckles, or a thousand other more subtle variations which would make his perfect solution a disaster for you. EXPERIMENT! Try 'em all out, and try 'em again.

    However, there's another side to the coin. If you're looking to minimise pain and/or damage, there's a good chance you're spending too much time at it. With the death of mechanical typewriters and manual carriages, we're currently often spending eight solid hours typing (with the odd bit of mousing on the side--the next time you give your significant other a backrub, pay attention to where the tightest muscles are. If they use a computer extensively, I almost guarantee it'll be on their mouse side), without moving any other parts of our bodies. This is not what we were designed to do!

    Make a point of getting some flexing in during the day. Get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so. Shake your hands out after typing a long block (or after a wild hour of Counterstrike *grin*)

    If, after finding a good ergonomic solution and loosening up your muscles, you're still suffering, take a (real--weeks!) break, and see a professional.

    All that being said - aren't laptops supposed to be the mobile solution for people? If you're really looking for a longterm solution because you do a lot of typing on a laptop, wouldn't a docking station and a regular egronomic keyboard be better for you?
  • Back in about 1983 or so I could type words commonly found in basic at somewhere 240 words per minute but that was because things like "list" and "run" were one multi-key keystroke. 240 wpm turns out to be 4 words per second which is damn fast.
  • If you always are looking at things close, you will have a tendacy towards nearsightness. A simple solution is get outside more offten. My eyes imporvied once I took up flying.
  • http://www.USPTO.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/1999/fe e20001001.htm
    says $15k is more like it...
    The $500 will only get you in the queue.
  • I want a keyboard like on the old ibm 3270 or even an real IBM XT keybaord. It seems like no one makes thouse kinds of keyswitches anymore let alone in a PS2 type setup.

    I'm currently typeing on one of the better cheap keyboards but I hate it since they keys just don't feel right.
  • I wonder what kind of switches it uses. The IBM keyboard used switches where the key would bend a spring and that would cause the spring to make the switch contact, not the key its self. many of the newer "clicky" keyboards just have funny springs but they key still forces they keyswitche directly.

    It ibm 3270 keyboard used fancy springs to get the feel right but used hall effect switches so there was no physical contact at all.
  • They do serve useful functions on windows machines, and more than once I've considered trying to get GNOME to do something with them through keycap. When I have to use Windows, the combination of ALT-TAB and the right-click key make it easier to go mouseless for longer. I also use the start button a lot in Windows and in KDE (in the former, one of the most annoying things about Win2K is that Win-F-F doesn't open a file finder dialog anymore).

  • Let's make a stab at objectivity re letter pairs:

    # input: one word per line.
    while(){chomp;$_=lc($_);1 while s{^(\w)(\w)}{$p{$1.$2}++;$2;}e;}
    foreach my $key (sort{$p{$b}$p{$a}}keys%p) {print"$key\t",$p{$key},"\n";}

    On my system (/usr/dict/words on solaris--dict from ispell? not sure) this gives er, in, an, on, te, le, at, en, re, ar as the most frequent. None of these are adjacent (and adjacency is really the only issue now that bar action's no longer involved). A better comparison would look at combos irrespective of order, though, and I don't feel like doing that right now.

    I appreciate your point, but keep in mind also that we don't know what the bar mechanism behind the keys was; it may even be that the bars for close keys like t and h were positioned such that they would not be in conflict.

    Of course, there's also the lack of strong evidence for superiority of Dvorak. At least, I haven't yet seen somebody to link to a well-documented case for Dvorak based on typist efficiency, and I have seen a link [utdallas.edu] (from above, courtesy briancarnell) that cites a specific study demonstrating that Dvorak's not worth the effort.

    Cheers.

  • Always nice on occasion to see not everyone on /. is brain dead &/or can't see past their own brainwashing.


    Uh-huh. But you cited http://www.dvortyboards.com/, a merchandising site, as a source for further info. This appears to be the source of your claim "that your fingers move 1/16th the distance when using Dvorak compared to QWERTY [slashdot.org]"--a claim that they offer no solid evidence for (and they don't even quantify this notion of "finger movement"!).

  • "er" and "re" aren't adjacent? or were you just saying adjacent and using the same finger (typically) to strike the keys?


    Oh--right, right. Yes, thanks for pointing that out--I was referring to same-fingerness, not adjacency. Yes, the issues are a bit muddled in switching between historical context and current practical usage...
  • Yeah.


    Another thing, though--I just modified the script to compute frequencies without regard for direction, and there were actually rather few adjacent pairs in the top frequency rankings. There are quite a few (16) pairs between re/er and the next-most-frequent adjacent pair, de/ed. Out of the first 35 or so pairs, 5 were adjacent. I don't know whether that's "good" or "bad", when compared to Dvorak pairings; I would be interested in finding out

    • how comprehensive my source dict file is, compared to, say, Webster's or the OED, and
    • where the adjacent and same-finger key pairings come up in the freq ranks, on both keyboards.

    Man, I must be bored. :)
  • I've been using computers since I was six, and my useage has been constant since I was eighteen. For most of my life, it was the standard extened keyboard with a dozen F keys, a number pad and so forth. Then I bought an iMac, which made use of what was, essentially, an extended laptop keyboard- same set as a laptop with the number pad tacked on. It was tiny- took a bit of time to get used to.

    Then I bought a powerbook 520, for writing. Same keyboard, less the number pad. A short while later I hooked into a Powerbook G3 (firewire)- which had much 'shallower' keys, and was is a real dream to use. Combine the small profile of laptop keyboards with the close proximity of the pointing device - in this case, a trackpad less than an inch below the spacebar- and your hand motions have completely minimized.

    I'm in an environment that utilizes almost every known input method- a mix od laptop, standard and extended keyboards, a trackball, mice, and a WACOM tablet. With the sole exeption of the laptop, every single combination has induced a good deal of strain, with the MOST strain coming from - you guessed it- the standard extended keyboard and mouse setup that almost 95% of the computer using world uses.

    I'm to the point where my laptop, while not the most powerful machine that I use, and by no means having the most disk space, is my primary system: it's the easiest to interface with, particularly when you consider the fact that an LCD is a lot easier on your eyes than a CRT, particularly when you're using your system in excess of three hours at a time.
  • No, I think you should check your figures on this. I think the record is much higher, something around 180 or maybe more, but I forget. It's something pretty insane. I believe the original poster, because I've been typing incessantly since 11-12, and am now 18, and can type over 100 on a good day (when my wrists don't ache. *sigh*). The speed increase was high for the first few years, and gradually sloped off, around 100, when I reach the point that others are suprised I'm actually hitting the correct keys instead of just fingermashing ;) But I do believe 130.
  • yeah, but it's the urban people who are stupid enough to believe them.

  • IBM Butterfly Keyboard (Score:5)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @04:24PM (#196272) Homepage Journal

    The butterfly keyboard from the old IBM Thinkpads was nice. Fullsize, nice layout.

  • Speech technology will not make keyboards obsolete any time soon (or ever) for one simple reason. I can type faster, and more accurately, than I can talk. This is not unusual among people who have used computers for 20 years or more.

    What if you can say to your computer "Computer, call Mary and tell her I can't make it to her birthday party. Invent some plausible excuse or other"? or "Write a letter to the Gas company and ask them to explain the overcharge in my bill?" What if your computer could just take care of similar problems without needing you to ask?

    Just a few thoughts about future possibilities down the road.
  • I've had a similar experience - I was able to abandon my wrist brace (I had tendonitis) after buying my Dell laptop - I think it comes from holding my hands in a more natural way (I actually use it in my lap).

    On the other hand my boss has just got me an IBM thinkpad A29 which with the 1400x1050 screen with KDE and antialiasing looks absolutely lovely - but the little red nipple-mouse thingy leaves my right hand in a horribly stressed state trying to use it - I really want the DELL kdb layout with the IBM screen etc

  • I miss my "Comfort Keyboard" (www.comfortkeyboard.com/ [comfortkeyboard.com]).

    I've talked to the designer on several occasions and he seems like he'd be open to designing the split keboard into a regular laptop, but the problem he runs into is getting the laptop manufacturers to pay attention. Even in marketing -- do you see Dell offering this as an alternative? Nep.

    The keyboard has been out for over 6 years. The keyboard is fully configurable as well -- key remapping, sticky-keys for handicapped, also has an optional foot pedal that you can configure for a common key. A friend of mine configured hers for the ESC key since it was the longest reach key. Repeat rate...all that stuff configurable.

    Now imagine two have build directly into the laptop. The locking devices could be a notched
    wheel protruding slightly from the sides of the computer.

    One obvious draw back: if tilted too high they'd block part of the screen.

    The hard part is not getting ergo folks to produce the keyboard -- its getting the big companies like Dell, who buy their laptops fully assembled from China, to incorporate it.

    The only way -- I hate to say it, it seems to effect change is for an affected person to sue the laptop manufacturer for contributing to or causing an RSI injury. OR for an already partially affected (disabled) person suing for equal access. Large companies in our system don't really listen until large sums of money and/or bad publicity are involved.

    -l
  • I've seen keyboards that actually had the right-third of the space bar broken off and made into a backspace key. As I only used them temporarily, I ended up deleting the last letter instead of putting in a space more than once, but if I were on it for awhile, I think it would be a very handy key to have. -jth
    ---
  • In days of old when knights were bold and powerbooks were yet invented, the keyboard of laptops hung right at the edge of the laptop. There was no place to rest your wrists. One of the great innovations of Apple that everyone else has since had copied (thank god) was one of the things that made the powerbook revolutionary: it added plenty of space below the keyboard where your tired tendons could take a break.
  • This is an urban legend. QWERTY was chosen, in fact, because typewriters using it were faster than competing schemes.
  • Yes, the first one is an urban legend, but yours is just made-up as well. The truth of the matter is that noone alive today has the definitive answer as to why the QWERTY keyboard was used. It certainly wasn't effeciency as the speed record has always been on DVORAK keyboards (that's the name of it, not the key arrangement.)

    When you said I made this up, you were a liar. If you would read any decent account of the history of the typewriter, there were in fact speed competitions held and those using QWERTY layouts won. Dvorak's layout didn't come until much later.

    The efficiency claim is also nonsense. Yes the fastest typing speeds in the world are achieved on Dvorak, but for the efficiency claim to be true, the average Dvorak keyboarder would have to be faster than the average QWERTY keyboarder. What few studies there are on this point typically find the differences in typing speed border on statistically insignificant.

    See this story [utdallas.edu], which has a good look at the issues and was featured on Slashdot awhile ago.

  • No Such Thing As Safe Keyboarding (Score:4)

    by briancarnell ( 94247 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @04:38PM (#196283) Homepage
    I type about 130 words per minute and do a lot of keyboard. I've been very worried about carpal syndrome as I head toward my mid-30s (and have been keyboarding incessantly since I was 11 or 12).

    The bottom line from what I can tell, is that there simply is no such thing as an ergonomic or safe keyboard. The bottom line is that the human hand and wrist did not evolve for keyboarding and even under the best of conditions, it is an awkward activity that will lead to carpal tunnel syndrome and similar problems for a significant number of people.

    What we really need are alternative system that would reduce the total number of keys needed to be pressed to form words rather than different layouts of the alphabet (and yes there are such systems out there).
  • I'm going to have to start looking into this. I've never had any problems with my hands in the past, but a few weeks ago I woke up and the first joint of the middle finger on my left hand was numb. Didn't go away... perhaps I should've taken a day off and stopped typing, but asking me to stop programming, surfing, and gaming is sort of silly. Or so I thought. The numbness has subsided a little, but seems to be gradually spreading down the left side of the finger. Maybe I should go to a doctor... because it's not like I'm going to stop using the finger.

    I spend almost all of my waking hours in front of a computer nowadays, and I don't want to fuck my career. I think the scary part is how it's so physical. Using a computer is a completely mental activity -- taking in information, reacting to information, creating new information -- that to be limited by a physical injury seems really frightening.

    --

  • "here" instead of "hear" or correct the fact that it heard "beer" or "deer" or "fear."
    Out here the deer fear to hear me drink beer.


    Hey. It's Saturday night, Memorial Day Weekend and I'm still at work. Gimmie break.
    --

  • I don't know where you're coming from. He said "if they wanna give me some cash", not "you must give me cash". "No patent" is not at all at variance with "feel free to give me money". Hey, I don't even have a patentable idea, but if anyone wants to give me money, I'll take it.

    And I think you're being too cynical when you say there's no reason to give him any cash. Someone out there might just feel grateful and give him some reward. Probably not as much as if he had sold it, and perhaps none at all, but it's not the impossibility you claim.

    Another point: the only chance of his idea being stolen would be for someone else to patent it as their own idea, something he has specifically asked us not to do.

    --
  • Are you talking about the old iBooks? I've used them in the past, and the keyboard wasn't anything to write home about, IMO. Of course, I use a huge several pound IBM I-could-kill-you-with-this-thing keyboard that has real springs, with "hard" keys that make a loud noise when you press them. If you can guess, I'm not a big fan of "soft-touch" keyboards, so I suppose that's why the iBook didn't make a big impression on me.

    It was small, like any other laptop keyboard, with all the normal keys in odd, cramped places. And, like many other laptop keyboards, the keys didn't give you much response, only depressing about a millimeter to activate the plastic sensor-thingie. (Solenoid?) Frankly, it didn't strike me as any different than any other laptop keyboard (ie, bad), except it was white and had Mac-specific keys.

    As for the rest of the iBook, I found that I hated the trackpad. For laptops, I rather prefer the rubber nipple.

    --

  • Interesting ideas, but... (Score:3)

    by legLess ( 127550 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @08:14PM (#196297) Journal
    You said, There's no need for 2 shift keys if a single one were properly placed somewhere more centrally.

    This is incorrect, IMHO. Something I realized as I began to type faster is that my high school typing teacher's advice was right-on: never ever use the same hand for SHIFT and the key it's modifying. At high speed it's hard to time that SHIFT, especially when you're hand's already contorted to hit two keys. What often happens is that your other hand will hit a key before you let go of shift. By SHIFTing with the opposite hand you maintain a better cadence on the keys and are more efficient.

    I also disagree that the CAPS LOCK key should be small. It's large for a reason - (i) for efficiency it has to be hit with your pinky, your least-coordinated digit, and (ii) depending upon the previous key press (e.g. 'G' ot 'T'), your finger might have a (relatively) substantial distance to travel. This interaction os governed by Fitt's Law [asktog.com] : "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target."

    Now consider that the CAPS LOCK key, while rarely used, is critical. For instance, typing 'CAPS LOCK' without it would be slow and painful. But it's use is only justified if the extra acquisition time is less than the time it takes to use the SHIFT key (for short groups like 'RMS,' using SHIFT can be faster). So the faster you can hit the CAPS LOCK key, the more efficient you'll be in cases of long groups of capital letters. This doesn't happen often, but that's one reason why it's so important: you don't have much chance to practice.

    I like your other ideas, though.

    question: is control controlled by its need to control?
    answer: yes
  • http://www.dvortyboards.com

    ---=-=-=-=-=-=---

  • Lots of people have their own *theory* of why the QWERTY format was choose, but no one has the definitive answer. The most popular is the fact that effecient keyboards lead to the arms sticking together. If true, the arms would have been rearanged instead of the keyboard.

    It's true the Dvorak keyboard wasn't around at the time, but even an alphabetical keyboard is faster than a QWERTY.

    You say that Dvorak is no more effecient than QWERTY... It's a fact that it is much more effecient. The average speed is irrelevent as the two groups of keyboard users are not comparable in size of make-up.

    It's a fact that your fingers move 1/16th the distance when using Dvorak compared to QWERTY. Now despite how fast any one person type, the FACT that your fingers move less distance is absolute PROOF that Dvorak is faster. And as I've said, every typing speed record is held by Dvorak.


    ---=-=-=-=-=-=---

  • The truth is, you don't need one of their boards. You can simply use the software with your OS and current keyboard to remap to a Dvorak layout. The hardware-based remaping makes things easier, but is not necessary. There are many images of Dvorak keyboards to print out, or you can always put stickers on the keys to represent the change.

    As far as typing... That's the bigest problem. Once people have found out about a better keyboard, they probably are already proficient (& complacent) with the QWERTY version.

    ---=-=-=-=-=-=---

  • If the reason for letter arangement is the bars sticking together, the bars would be rearanged rather than the keys.

    Either is just as difficult as the other. Why make the user learn how to type again?

    ---=-=-=-=-=-=---

  • I didn't claim they were a source of facts... Just a place to get info about the keyboards. I never intended for it to be taken as an impartial information source.

    ---=-=-=-=-=-=---

  • Re:Will probably need a new interface... (Score:3)

    by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @04:59PM (#196308) Journal
    Yes, the first one is an urban legend, but yours is just made-up as well. The truth of the matter is that noone alive today has the definitive answer as to why the QWERTY keyboard was used. It certainly wasn't effeciency as the speed record has always been on DVORAK keyboards (that's the name of it, not the key arrangement.)

    You can hear more about it at http://www.dvortyboards.com/

    ---=-=-=-=-=-=---

  • I found that it's not the keyboard style, but is the fit of the keyboard to the person. Using the Microsoft Natural keyboard actually made things worse. I have read at several studies that conclude that keyboard fit is more important than style of keyboard.

    What's more important is the positioning and taking regular breaks. I found that regular icing helps.

  • It's not ergo in the traditional sense, but my PowerBook G3 has a wonderful keyboard. In fact, one of the reasons I bought was for the keyboard. Not too cramped, good key travel, an almost-real keys (not chicklets).
  • On the PowerBook G3 series (Wallstreet/Lombard/Pismo) the gfx chip (RageII - RageMobility128 depending on model) is on the bottom of the PCB and somewhat connected to the bottom of the case via a metal plate. That's where almost all of the heat comes from. The heatsink on the CPU is the little metal shelding box that covers the half of the top of the PCB. Heat coming from the keyboard is from the CPU.
  • Wonder how much angle you're actually looking for.. right now there's about 60 degrees between my arms, and the keyboard is a standard Toshiba laptop one. My wrists are straight. The hands/fingers need not be aligned perpendicular to the qwertyuiop line (as long as you're used to typing that way). I really don't see a reason for split keyboard.

    On the other hand, for something really ergonomic you would want palms facing each other and a two-sided keyboard in between. Palms downwards is a rather extreme position for the wrist and arm, which is why this would be a lot more comfortable. But then again, you would have to be able to touch type in order to use this, and learning might be tricky if you didn't know already.

    The above only applies to typing, so things get even more tricky when you consider keyboard navigation in web browsers, games, and other programs. This is basically why I see a long, long future with the conventional flat keyboard. As one more example, if I'm using my right hand for eating pizza or other greasy/sticky stuff, I may want to use my left hand to press arrow keys (for scrolling the display). Now that would be annoying on a two-sided vertical keyboard. Of course a person with only one hand fit for typing would never buy such a keyboard. (I'm not saying there aren't other uses for one of your hands while surfing the web ;-)

    --
    I hit the karma cap, now do I gain enlightenment?

  • If its a laptop, you should just get one with a touchscreen so that you can write on it and not worry about RSI. It's got to beat a keyboard, both in amount of comfort and the weight and space taken up by a touch screen as opposed to a keyboard.

    --

  • Lets say I was at work and I clicked that link and got a screen full of *any* porn and someone walked by, or they checked the proxy logs, I'd be SOL.

    Then maybe you shouldn't be so click happy, you stupid fuck. I personally think the parent link is just an enforcer of the process of natural selection.

    --

  • There is a good set of pages covering the fact and fiction of the QWERTY keyboard here [earthlink.net]

    The QWERTY keyboard, believe it or not, was present on the very first modern typewriter... the Sholes & Glidden, made by E. Remington & Sons (best known for their guns) beginning in 1874. Data from the 1878 patent can be seen here [earthlink.net], as well as other historical data.

    (Of course there were many other designs going back more than 100 years before. but they didn't go anyplace)

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • To all the people responding to this with "no, the reason is" please provide some substantiation for your argument? And I don't mean a link to a web page full of other people spouting unsubstantiated prose. I mean real citations. This is still the only post which seems to hold water.

    Think I'm ignoring the obvious (the letter-pair distance thing is the most commonly cited reason for the layout)? The common example people use is "th". Well, look down at your keyboard... Where is the t? Where is the h? What about another real common combination like "ea" or "io"? That theory isn't really holding up to scrutiny is it?

  • Yes, yes... That's why common two letter combinations such as "th" "oi" "ea" and "tr" (and contrawise "rt") are located so far apar.... hey, actually, they aren't. So are we really sure this reason is it?

    If we could mechanically arrange those to be physically close on the keyboard but physically distant on the letter carrier, then they could have chosen any arrangement they wanted.

  • If true, the arms would have been rearanged instead of the keyboard.

    How?
    http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/IMAGES/upstrdiag .jpeg
    http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/IMAGES/Q.78pat.j peg

  • I think some laptop keyboards are much more comfortable than regular ones. For example, I find that since I got my Thinkpad 570 [ibm.com] my hands actually hurt less, and my typing speed improved. Its keyboard is very convenient for three reasons:

    1. There is a small wrist-resting area below the keys, so my hands don't have to hover while I type.
    2. This came to me as a surprise: the nipple-mouse is incredibly convenient because it doesn't require me to keep switching my hand between the keys and a real mouse. I became so accustomed to one that I keep looking for it with my fingers when working on a regular keyboard.
    3. Finally, the keys feel great and don't travel as deep as on a regular keyboard. This way, my fingers move a shorter total distance, lessening the exertion.
    ~
  • Yes, QWERTY was chosen as it was faster than competing schemes for typewriters, not for the users of them.

    Typewriters had metal arms that had to fly up. As the most commonly used keys in an A-Z arangement are near each other, they tended to collide a lot and jam. By moving to QWERTY, the common keys were spread out as much as possible, hence reducing jams and therefore increasing overall speed.

    On a modern keyboard, the jams have no reason to occur as there are no metal arms - so the speed gain for QWERTY is lost. A new keyboard design would require people to relearn key positions but, otherwise, there's no reason why QWERTY is still needed.

    Certainly there is an urban legend that QWERTY was chosen to slow typists - it wasn't, just to move the keys to more separated positions. But equally, dismissing changes to QWERTY in a non-typewritter environment, because of the urban legend is to miss the point just as much.

  • I wonder if we're psychologically predisposed towards uncomfortable keyboards. Even the QWERTY layout was created was INefficiency in mind -- people were typing too quickly on old typewriters and the teeth kept getting jammed together. I don't know about other who've gotten used to the ergonomic keyboards, but for someone who isn't a classically trained typist, they are a serious pain. I'm a slightly above average typist (around 65 wpm), but I tend to have my index fingers wander a little further than they should, and that extra space in the middle always ended up being more of a hindrance than anything.
  • Somehow I think that most modern laptops would need some sort of air circulation for the chip. Compare this to the g4 cube - no fan, yet it needs a 1/2ft^3 heatsink and a bunch of vents to properly cool. Even my TiVo with its 50Mhz powerpc processor has a large fan. Even if Apple could make a Gx based laptop without a fan, it would need circulation. I suppose they could, say, use the Ti Powerbook as its own heatsink, but then it would get extremely toasty and probably fail to function in a hot environment. Now, a lower-powererd waterproof PDA would be cool. I have an epod that I modified and it definitely has the capability to be made waterproof. No ventilation at all. All I would need to do would be to seal the joints, create some sort of sealed pushbuttons, and make the touchscreen work through a waterproof shield.

    By the way, I got my TiVo for free in their essay contest a while back and it broke. I think I'm going to part it out tomorrow. Is there anything besides the hard drive(s) and fan that would be useful? I guess I could unhook the IR reciever and see if I could hook it to the IR header on my motherboard... possibly the TV tuner would be a normal bt848 card or something since that has pretty robust Linux support.
  • The position of the bars on a manual typewriter relates directly to the position of the keys. The bars were arranged in a linear fashion, with each key directly in line with one bar in this line. Look at your keyboard. Notice how each row of keys is staggered from the others? This is another legacy from the Sholes design. You can figure out the order of the type bars Sholes decided to use by taking a ruler or other straight-edge and lining it up vertically along the side of the '1' key on your keyboard. Now move the ruler to the right until it lines up with the next key: the 'Q'. Go to the next: the 'A'. Continue on like this and you get the exact same order of the line of type bars on Sholes QWERTY machine: 1QA2ZWS3XED4CRF5VTG6BYH7NUJ8MIK9,OL0.P;

    If you look at a manual typewriter, you'll see that you cannot move a type bar without moving the key that actuates it, as the key mechanisms can't cross over one another. Each key is nothing more than a pad on the end of a lever. The opposite end of the lever connects to the lower end of the type bar, which is itself a lever (bent 90 degrees at the fulcrum). Key goes down, other end of key-lever goes up, lower end of type-bar-lever goes up, type head on the other end flies forward and strikes paper. Simple design that worked well. That's why people bought it. Others had invented type-machines before Sholes patented his in the 1860's (William Burt - 1829, Xavier Projean - 1833), but they were too complicated to be usefull.

  • Sholes had a reason for QWERTY (Score:5)

    by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @06:02PM (#196336) Homepage
    Yes, the first one is an urban legend, but yours is just made-up as well. The truth of the matter is that noone alive today has the definitive answer as to why the QWERTY keyboard was used.

    That is not the truth of the matter. The QWERTY layout was indeed developed to increase typing speed. The reason has to do with the original Sholes typewriter being a finger-powered mechanical device. Like all manual typewriters since, each character on the Sholes model was set on the end of a metal bar that struck the paper when its key was pressed. The original keyboard layout was alphabetical. The problem was, that when a typist learned to type fast, the bars attached to letters that lay close together on the keyboard became entangled with one another when they were struck in quick succession. Sholes' solution was to calculate which letters were most often used in English and then position them as far from one another as possible. This lessened the chance of clashing type bars and allowed typists to work faster. Manual typewriters are a thing of the past now, but there's too much "user base" for the QWERTY layout to change it. Not quite as amusing as the way space shuttle solid rocket boosters ended up being the same in diameter as the width of an ancient roman war chariot, but the end result is similarly an artifact.
  • So, what happened tothe Dvorak Keyboard layout, where the keys were positioned based on frequency of use within words in the english language. Granted this is only useful for englsih language usage, but why wasn't this keyboard layout more popular. I haven't seen this layout on keyboards since maybe 1987, on an old appleIIGS keyboard that a friend of mine modified, along with a software keymap.

    Does anyone have any idea why this keyboard layout didn't catch on? Is the previous poster correct? Are we predisposed to making our life more difficult than it has to be? What's wrong with us...?


    --

  • Wrist Rest == Bad (Score:3)

    by dmatos ( 232892 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @05:10PM (#196339)
    Sorry, but I'd have to disagree with you on the topic of a wrist rest. I'm guessing the one on your laptop is made of the hard plastic case that encloses the guts of your machine.

    Resting your wrists on that while typing will put pressure on the carpal tunnel, increasing your risk of developing CTS. Personally, whenever my wrists start to hurt from long periods of typing, I move my keyboard to the edge of my desk so that I can't rest my wrists on anything, which I tend to do when I get lazy.

    If you can't get out of the habit of resting your wrists when typing, you may want to look into getting some form of better support (I don't know how effective those gel wrist rests are).

    Personally, I have a theory that typists did not suffer from CTS, even though they typed all day long, simply because they did not rest their wrists. It was impossible to generate enough force to create a clear letter on paper with a typewriter unless the hands were positioned above the keyboard, with the wrists not resting on anything. Thus, they had to have their wrists raised all day, and there was no extra pressure on the carpal tunnel. This is a big difference from what a lot of "lazy keyboarders" do today.

    Another bonus of not resting your wrists is that your arms will get tired every once and a while, forcing you to get up and do something else. This is the perfect time for some of those stretches and exercises that are suggested by all the ergonomicists (sp?)
  • ...and in fact any input device which you use in a repetetive way without moving your wrists to a new position periodically, will cause carpal tunnel.

    I don't personally believe in special keyboards to prevent CP; I've had one brush with wrist pain that I quickly banished by changing my habits, and I only use regular keyboards. (I find the "natural" very annoying because I'm not used to the angle, and it reduces my speed.)

    When at work, at least once an hour (and usually a bit more often) I make a point of getting up and walking around a bit. I deliberately stretch and flex my wrists and back. I also make a point of looking for a few moments at some object in the distance, even if it is the far wall of the office.

  • I give anyone permission to use my above idea, so long as they don't patent it. :)

    A fine and noble sentiment, which is completely at variance with the next sentence...

    And if they wanna give me some cash for it, I'll gladly take it.

    If there is no patent, there is no reason for anyone to give you any cash. It's an idea which can be readily stolen; this is why we have patents.

    If you want someone to give you some cash for your idea (which might very well deserve some), go to nolo.com [nolo.com] and order a copy of Patent It Yourself. Patent it. Sell your patent to a company that actually makes laptop computers. Congratulate yourself for your productive participation in our fine capitalist society.

  • Does staring at a computer screen for long periods of time screw up your eyesight?

    Yes, it can make you nearsighted, especially if you are young. As with all muscles it is not healthy to keep those which focus the eye in one position all the time, nor is it particularly good for the lens. My girlfriend was told by several opthalmologists that her childhood habit of reading books up close without looking away (she was hiding behind them) resulted in her 6-diopter nearsightedness which she eventually had corrected via Lasik. My own parents both wore BC glasses but my vision at 37 is 20/20.

  • Using online searches, filing your own papers, and so on you should be able to patent your idea for about $500 including the book from nolo. Of course the more critical the idea the more care you might want to take, hiring patent attorneys and so on. In the book Pressman gives many examples of ordinary people who have taken out lots of patents.

    Most likely you simply don't know anything about the process. That's why it's worth the ~$50 for the book. It's complicated, but very do-able at low cost if you're motivated. The particular idea fronted by our parent post is especially suited to the PIY method I think.

  • The $500 will only get you in the queue.

    This is why you should read Patent It Yourself if you're interested. Many of these fees are not really necessary, though you may have to do some legwork and it may take a bit longer.

  • Re:In defence of the keyboard (Score:4)

    by localroger ( 258128 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @06:05PM (#196354) Homepage
    Computer, call Mary and tell her I can't make it to her birthday party. Invent some plausible excuse or other.

    The poster said SR, not AI.

    SR means I could dictate this article. You are proposing a system by which I could say "Computer, draft a reply to this idiot and show me the next post," and this post would be posted automatically.

    Quite a different technology, that.

  • non-typist rules (Score:5)

    by localroger ( 258128 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @05:00PM (#196355) Homepage
    I too type about 130 wpm. I know this because for years I told people I type about 40, which is what I tested when I graduated from high school. After years of listening to this a coworker said "no way," plopped me down in front of a PC (running WordPerfect 5.1), and said "start typing." When she announced the minute was over I'd pounded out almost 800 characters, including spaces.

    There seem to be two keys to this. First, I wasn't copying, so there was no read/translate/transfer step involved. Second, I was on a computer with a backspace key and not being scored on perfection. Both of these are realistic conditions for typing in the modern workplace, BTW.

    And I do regularly attain that kind of performance, especially in bursts when I'm pounding out a section of code which contains a lot of keywords I'm used to typing. Yes, fingers are flying; I've noticed (you get where you can actually observe yourself, since you're not thinking of the finger movements) that one finger will be headed toward the wrong key and, before it arrives, the right pinky is already headed toward the back arrow. The true max key rate is probably closer to 150 wpm equiv, because I do a lot of short pauses and backspacing. But this kind of speed is possible on a computer.

  • In defence of the keyboard (Score:5)

    by localroger ( 258128 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @05:24PM (#196356) Homepage
    Speech technology will not make keyboards obsolete any time soon (or ever) for one simple reason. I can type faster, and more accurately, than I can talk. This is not unusual among people who have used computers for 20 years or more.

    All the alternative methods proposed -- speech, touchscreens, handwriting recognition, blah blah blah, have the same problem; they are slow and inexact. Handwriting schemes actually cause worse CP problems than keyboards. (Today I get writer's cramp if I have to handwrite more than 1/2 page or so; I can type for hours, with regular brief interruptions, with no problem.) I do not have to use some alternate scheme to inform the computer that I mean "here" instead of "hear" or correct the fact that it heard "beer" or "deer" or "fear." If I type the same thing a lot I can get very very fast at it.

    I have watched the operators of machines who have to do a few simple functions over and over move from the touchscreen to the keyboard, and eventually become so proficient that their fingers are not visible they are moving so fast -- with no training at all! This is why, in my job, I never code a function in a GUI or touch environment without a keyboard equivalent. The keyboard is not the most intuitive, but it is the most efficient, man/machine interface designed so far.

    The scheme of 100 or so keys arranged in ready proximity to the fingers seems to allow a great deal of information to be transferred from a properly trained brain to a machine with minimal error. None of the alternative methods I have seen proposed come close to this, despite the ease with which some might be picked up by novices.

  • I've used several laptop's over the years, whether working on a customers or shopping for my own this past 6 months. What laptop did I buy? an Apple iBook.

    This is definitely the most comfortable laptop that Ive ever had the pleasure of typing on. While there are a few _layout_ changes that I would make just for the sake of convenience, I can sit and pound away for hours at a unix shell or a term paper and be none worse for the wear.

    I believe this is a result of the relatively soft plastic that was used in the construction of the keys, you dont feel like you're pounding a brick when you make a keystroke. Also another point of interest is the rounded front edge of the machine. While this _may_ have been designed for more form over function, it achieves a dual purpose. It's quite comfortable to just lay your wrists on the computer, and this alleviates many of the cramps etc. that Ive had from other laptops.

    Most have a solid 90 degree corner there for your computing pleasure forcing most to either suspend your wrists in an uncomfortable manner or risk cutting off circulation to your hands.

    If any of you happen to know someone that owns an iBook, or maybe you live in a city where they have a retail store that carries them, try it out. While some of the keys may take a little getting used to (like hitting F12 instead of Delete accidentally), overall it has a really solid and comfortable feel.

    Cheers,
    Syn

  • I have studied the problem specially (for desktop though) and I see no good method of text input at all.

    Firstly, forget about direct neural interface and speech input. The neural interface is terribly slow, the speech input cannot deal with programming language texts.

    Then, forget about a stylus and touchscreen. Stylus is simply too slow, touchscreen will cover your screen with grease from your hands.

    There is a nice product that looks promising - Alphagrip [alphagrip.com] - but AFAIK it's still not in production, and I fear it has a lot of other problems, for instance, I cannot imagine how it can be used as a game device as claimed by inventors, or how the index finger can press UP.

    Datahand [datahand.com] looks the best and is ergonomic enough but is simply too big to fit in a laptop.Twiddler [handykey.com] IMHO requires too non-ergonomic fingers movement severely limiting the input speed.

    The following methods look promising:
    Keybowl [keybowl.com] that can be emulated with a pair of analog joysticks taken from Sony PS Doubleshock joysticks,
    Wlonk [got.net] - a 10-key macroprogrammable chording keyboard (You should design the mouse, driver and formfactor yourself),
    and variations of TheBAT, DataEgg, 7KEY a.s.o (7-key 1-hand chording keyboard. Are you going to study the chords?)

    Remove all SPAM from my email [mailto] to answer.

  • Eliminate redundancy; get rid of similar keys (Score:5)

    by 6EQUJ5 ( 446008 ) on Saturday May 26, 2001 @04:57PM (#196378) Homepage

    - There's no need for 2 shift keys if a single one were properly placed somewhere more centrally.

    - CAPS LOCK is typically double the size of normal character keys, that's needless.

    - The 4 arrow keys could be replaced by a single small joystick-like piece, that could even read odd angles if you set it to do so!

    - Consider giving the delete key a shift-function above it, perhaps "Undo Delete" that would easily restore in a cut-and-paste fassion.

    Other ideas....?
  • Here's a fixed link for those that haven't yet figured out where the page is:

    The page in question [ibm.com].

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