geekhack
geekhack Marketplace => Great Finds => Topic started by: dec.net on Mon, 20 December 2010, 15:04:24
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http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260671390585&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
Hey guys, just bought me one of those for €19,90 + shipping. Unfortunately the seller will probably keep me waiting over the holidays.
For review and discussion of the (seemingly quite over-engineered) board in question see:
http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?t=8016
Chris
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Nice trackball position.
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BAD arrow keys position. I *cannot* stand arrow keys in a row like that (nevermind the fact that that's the first keyboard I seen lacking a ctrl and alt on the right side of the spacebar).
The last time I used arrow keys in that manner was on a stupid mac laptop thing.
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Yes, it's a rather unintuitive arrow key arrangement, though it might be a bit faster as soon as you got used to it and have your fingers moved to the correct position, as there is no fingersliding required to go from up- to down-arrow.
Personally I don't see the lack of right Ctrl and right Alt as a problem. I'm routinely mapping right Alt to Caps Lock anyway, and I never in my life felt the need to use right Ctrl. So I guess if the keys feel alright, it might turn out to be a rather nice keyboard. I'm thinking about having the case sandblasted and clearcoat it for the all-aluminium look, or perhaps repaint it - in any way I don't think it'll stay in that particular shade of green for long.
Let's see about that trackball, the mentioned thread makes me think there might not be too many chances to have it recognized by modern OS'es (linux excluded) without rather complicated driver hacks, and it's not like I really need one anyway.
Perhaps there might be an absurd tenkeyless-conversion in the future of that thing... the aim would be a rather compact yet heavy and sturdy keyboard that I could take with me in my backpack whereever I go without fearing for its structural integrity - and yes, the quality of those keyboards on the public computers in my University would justify exactly that sort of thing.
Edit: No can do, looking at the photo of the internals again - it seems like the controller sits right above the numblock.
Chris