Blank Keyboard

Raynach writes "A friend of mine recently sent me a link for Das Keyboard, the keyboard for UberGeeks. This keyboard is unique in that it has no inscriptions on the keys, which the maker touts will make you type 100% faster in a few weeks since it will keep you from looking at the keyboard. This keyboard also features individually weighted keyswitches, "The keys are divided into groups and their feedback springs are weighted differently; from 35 grams to 80 grams, which correspond to the strength of the finger that touches the keys." But is this "UberGeek" keyboard really worth the high price tag?"

Business skill at work

[moz25]

Now that is what differentiates the true entrepreneur from the ordinary folk: market the feature on which you're actually saving money and sell the item for 3-4 times comparable items.

Too many keyboard layouts

[sphealey]

> which the maker touts will make you type 100%
> faster in a few weeks since it will keep you from
> looking at the keyboard.

10-15 years ago I might have agreed with this, but today there are so many keyboard layouts that it is impossible not to look. The ~ and | symbols are in a different place on every one of the 10 keyboards I use daily, for example.

sPh

Re:Obligatory

[Zwets]

Or, more importantly, how do you find out where they've decided to put the backslash this time?

Re:a tip

[jellomizer]

I think the real reason for the extra cash is the different weights on the keys. Where some keys are harder to press then others. Thus giving you a better feel of where you are in the keyboard. and also prevention from pressing enter when you really wanted \ or ; or SHIFT or other keys that sometimes cause problems.

Ads...

[etedronai]

I see that the ads on slashdot have made their way out of the banners and now are being held up as actual stories!

Seriously, is this anything other than a glorified advertisement for this keyboard?

Re:Calculator key?

[Anonymous Conrad]

Give me your adress, I'll send you 2 bucks to buy an actual calculator.

Oh, I can afford two bucks but thanks for the offer! I'll settle for a recommendation of a calculator I can copy/paste into the windows clipboard?

Re:reason for, reason not for

[yagu]

Every so often I marvel at the adaptivity of the human nervous system, the way that I can just think a word and it appears on the screen without my having to pay attention to where my individual fingers go. It's the next best thing to mental telepathy.

I absolutely agree here! It is almost nothing short of amazing. Wonder if you've ever had the experience where you are typing something, you think one word, and another perfectly spelled "other" word appears on the screen/paper? That one totally freaks me out. It's pretty clear that the adaptation by the body has just created another channel of language.... While I've never learned sign, I'm guessing it's a similar deal.

(By the way, it'd be nice if typing classes came back... I never took any classes because at the time, it was only for "secretarial" training, and computers as we know them today didn't exist.... like I stated before it was only because of a crisis in tension I even addressed the issue of learning the keyboard. Are there typing classes anymore?)

Re:a tip

[wireloose]

Looks to me like classic Sam Clemens (Mark Twain). Take a $15 keyboard, add whitewash (remove letters), add propaganda (ubergeekness) and they'll flock.

Re:Is there a DVORAK version?

[NINtendo72]

Most keyboards are hard wired for QWERTY. If you have a blank keyboard you can surely remap the keys in windows for DVORAK, but if you are navigating your BIOS or running in DOS or some other shell then your keyboard is going to return to QWERTY. They should think about making a DasVORAK Keyboard, if the keyboard improves your typing as much as they say it does it would be crazy not to.

Re:Calculator key?

[Omestes]

Am I the only person on earth who still just wants a plain old keyboard? Everytime I go shopping of a new keyboard, I spend HOURS looking for a decent one, that isn't larger than my modest desk,that does not have more superfluous buttons than actual keys.

The happiest I've ever been with a keyboard was a small black wireless one, sans num keys, but I have an extra (wired) set of num keys, if I so need them. It was small (about the size of a 12" laptop keyboard), meaning my fingers needed less play to type.

My other favorite keyboard was the giant IBM behemoth keyboard, that could, if you so choose, protect you from bullets and on-comming traffic.

Whats so special about top buttons, anyway? Most of the keyboards hat have them have a silly software prog that has to be running all the time. If your so lazy that you NEED to have everything at finger level, and not at mousing desktop level, then... well... I'm speachless. You can move your mouse a whole inch for the same program...

Re:reason for, reason not for

[junkcannibal]

you are almost completely right. I disagree about the benefit of being able to your words onto paper as fast as you can type them. I've gotten many stream of consciousness letters, memos, and "what ifs", where I wished that the writer had slowed down a bit in their comminucation effort so that they might realize that the note they are sending me is (a) horribly misspelled because though they can type they still can't spell, (b) something they did not have to tell me, or (c) gibberish anyway because something interupted them for split second in the middle of a tought.

P.S. I look at the keyboard all the time. Am I the only one that can remember roughly a line of text and not need to look back up at the screen in order to edit it or continue typing. My fingers don't have eyes, but I'm not yet so feeble that I can't remember the sentence I'm typing. I don't retype written ttext or type from dictation, that job is for machines.

P.S. - This is not to say that blind typing is a useless skill.

Re:A disaster for Europeans!

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally the first letter after a "." is the beginning of a new sentence and therefore written in uppercase.

I can only guess why or if the longer pressing of the shift-key has any practical sense, but it explains where this comes from.

Re:I had a better suggestion

[BillyBlaze]

Do the next best thing, and learn Dvorak while using a regular keyboard.

Re:a tip

[EvanED]

I don't know about you, and maybe it's just that I'm used to control being in the corner (very likely now that I think about it), but I find that thumb reach less comfortable.

Now, I flopped my caps lock and ctrl key so that it's a very small motion to hit ctrl. I tried it on the Sun keyboards in the comp sci labs at school and won't go back.