Bloomberg FRE100 - anyone know anything about this thing?

[chyros]

Hiya guys, got another two keyboards for free today (the other one a strange grey label model M, might talk about that later); the one in question is this; a small, funny Bloomberg keyboard, I assumed it's a "FRE100" but I can't really find a lot about it. I was wondering if somebody could tell me more about this board.







It's a very strange keyboard, as you can see. It's got a seventh key row on top and many keys have very weird functions like "code" and "govt" and "equity" and stuff like that. It's colour-coded and the keys don't have a slanted profile. They resemble chiclet keys but they're actually a type of individual rubber dome switches. The keyfeel is quite obviously rubber dome, but at the same time it's actually really nice and the tactility is extremely pronounced, particularly for a dome keyboard. I'd pit the keyfeel of this against any other dome board any day (well maybe not Topre, but I haven't tried that yet xD). It's got a fingerprint scanner and a white-silver colour scheme  - that, the chiclet-like keys and the bottom-left italic letter scheme remind me strongly of an Apple product, but I don't think it is. It's got a translucent cable that ends in both a P/S2 and USB jack.

All in all I really quite like it, it's pretty quirky but feels quite nice and it's got a nice form factor. Can anyone shed some light on this thing?

[0100010]

Is that a mouse type device under the numpad area, or a fingerprint reader?

[hwood34]

Some sort of horrendous looking short throw rubberdome

[Firebolt1914]

Doesn't bloomberg make keyboards for stock trading?

[chyros]

Is that a mouse type device under the numpad area, or a fingerprint reader?

Fingerprint reader.

Doesn't bloomberg make keyboards for stock trading?

That would make sense actually! Especially considering the labels on some of the keys. Would be interesting to know how it ended up at a university, in that case xD .

[Shanghaied]

It's a the keyboard for a Bloomberg Terminal (it's for financial instrument transactions). The keys "govt", "muni" and "equity" for example stands for government bonds, municipal bonds and shares. The thing at the bottom is a high-res finger print reader, which is required for signing in to the terminal, because the terminals are usually licensed and charged on a per-trader basis, and the reader would theoretically prevent account sharing. Basically it's one of the products through which Michael Bloomberg built up his vast fortune.

[chyros]

Ha cool, cheers dude! Guess not a lot of people will have one of these then xD .

[Shanghaied]

Ha cool, cheers dude! Guess not a lot of people will have one of these then xD .

Haha, it's rare, but not that rare  . There are several hundred thousand of these terminals around the world - pretty much any financial institution anywhere involved in finance (shares/bounds/forex) will have at least a couple of these. A friend working at a medium-sized European bank told me that they have like two or three dozens at the office. Although I'm guessing the systems are only serviced and disposed of by Bloomberg employees, hence why you don't see many of these keyboards for sale.

Also wikipedia has a pretty cool picture of what appears to be a older, mechanical version of the keyboard: 

[chyros]

Ha cool, cheers dude! Guess not a lot of people will have one of these then xD .

Haha, it's rare, but not that rare  . There are several hundred thousand of these terminals around the world - pretty much any financial institution anywhere involved in finance (shares/bounds/forex) will have at least a couple of these. A friend working at a medium-sized European bank told me that they have like two or three dozens at the office. Although I'm guessing the systems are only serviced and disposed of by Bloomberg employees, hence why you don't see many of these keyboards for sale.

Also wikipedia has a pretty cool picture of what appears to be a older, mechanical version of the keyboard:

Haha oh wow, that looks just like a Portal keyboard xD . Guess it's not rare then - still no idea what it was doing at the uni though. Maybe the Economics department or something.

It's a fun keyboard though. I'm going to try and get it to work tomorrow. Honestly, the keyfeel is better than it might look like.

[MGH]

When I visited Morgan Stanley's offices, I saw keyboards that looked like these on one of the floors.

[SamirD]

If anyone wants one of these, there's actually one on chicago's craigslist:
https://chicago.craigslist.org/sox/sop/d/bloomberg-keyboard/6645388563.html

[br0qn]

rather than make a new thread, thought I'd share these images in here for anyone interested... could be some cool color inspiration.