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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Phaedrus2129 on Tue, 28 September 2010, 17:20:19
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No, it's not a mechanical. Thrift City USA had about a dozen crappy rubber domes of various makes, but this one caught my eye. It's a Cirque Wave Keyboard, an ergonomic discrete rubber dome keyboard with integrated track pad. Now, normally I'd ignore it, except that this is a rubber dome that doesn't feel half bad! Imagine brown Cherries with about 5g more force and a slightly softer landing. The feel is very similar. The keycaps are Alps compatible.
It's quite old; the trackpad cord actually uses the parallel port, though it came with an adapter to PS/2 and doesn't feel like it's ever been taken off. It has a large L-shaped enter key, but a standard sized backspace; backslash is moved to the right of Rshift. In the middle between the split QWERTY section are three buttons that appear to be tab, backspace, and something to do with the mouse. Speaking of the split, B is on the left side, 6 is on the right.
The numberpad has some interesting secondary/tertiary legends.
/ = "Left Button"
* = "Both Btns"
- = "Right Button"
5 = "Click"
+ = "Double Click"
0 = "Button Lock"
Del = "Button Release"
There's also a button above the numpad with a left-pointing arrow. I'm not sure what it does.
It has three adjustable feet with two elevation levels, but it's odd because they're located such that they raise the front of the keyboard. I don't get it.
I'll take pictures of it later. But it's very interesting.
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I can't wait to see some pictures of the keyboard! I've never heard of something like it before.
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Nice find, it sounds interesting.
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I'm typing on it right now, and it really isn't half-bad. It's taking a bit to get used to the feeling of my hands being too far apart, but as for just plain feel I'd call it a solid 7/10. I'd prefer it to MYs in a heartbeat, and probably MLs as well.
The elevation system is set up so that the keyboard can be tilted back, so if you have RSI and your chair has you higher than your desk, your wrists aren't bent nearly as much.
The "mouse" button I mentioned earlier toggles "mouse keys" so you can use the numpad as the cursor, and that's also the purpose of the tertiary labels on the numpad.
I certainly don't regret the $5 I spent on this so far. Very interesting.
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Here's a picture pulled from Google:
(http://www.ergocanada.com/products/keyboards/cirque_smooth_cat_large.jpg)
Mine's almost exactly the same, except it has "Wave Keyboard" at the top right instead of "Cirque". The model # is GKB330.
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Thats neat!
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Imagine brown Cherries with about 5g more force and a slightly softer landing. The feel is very similar. The keycaps are Alps compatible.
That sounds kind of like the feel of a Keytronic - can you compare it to a Keytronic?
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I don't have a Keytronic to compare to.