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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: vivalarevolución on Thu, 22 May 2014, 15:23:37
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The Microsoft Surface has keyboard that you can add for $129. It's probably scissor switch rubber dome. We all know how much it costs to manufacture those things. Yea, it does have backlighting and that touchpad. But you can get a scissor switch keyboard with a trackpad for like one third off the cost of the Surface keyboard.
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As a proprietary accessory, I'm not really surprised at the price. It's also very thin and attaches to the Surface magnetically, doubling as a cover.
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^ that
you're ignoring all the other aspects that cost money and focusing only on the switches.
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And it's hella sturdy, let's just add that to the cost. Been using my surface pro 2 with a type cover 2 non stop the last half a year.. It's holding up really well.
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R&D is very expensive. I never really thought about it much until I worked in an R&D department. then it hits you: they're paying you to develop this thing but they're not selling what you're working on. How do they get their money back? If they're lucky, they sell enough of the product at a high enough markup to hopefully make back enough to cover your salary they have already paid you and make a profit. That's how a keyboard with $20 worth of parts costs $130.
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R&D is very expensive. I never really thought about it much until I worked in an R&D department. then it hits you: they're paying you to develop this thing but they're not selling what you're working on. How do they get their money back? If they're lucky, they sell enough of the product at a high enough markup to hopefully make back enough to cover your salary they have already paid you and make a profit. That's how a keyboard with $20 worth of parts costs $130.
M$ needs to recoup from all of the unsold original surface models
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The R&D was wasted on the touch cover product. That hardware was so inanely conceived as it forced touch typists to actually look down at the keyboard to type, WTF? And good going with the similar naming convention of keyboards: touch cover, type cover, touch cover 2, and type cover 2. If you're glancing over the online ordering, you might not even know that they are different products and end up ordering the sh1tty touch cover.
At least they got it right this time around by only having one keyboard product available for the surface pro 3, the type cover.
But to answer the OP's question, Belac is probably correct, the keyboard is probably around $20 tops to produce, package, and distribute. The high markup on accessories is also to help make up for the lower margins made on the Surface devices themselves.
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why am i not surprised the touch cover isn't regarded very highly here lol
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The touch cover has no feedback and feels like compressed cardboard
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M$ needs to recoup from all of the unsold original surface models
The entire surface program was mismanaged horribly from the start. Even after the 2's came out, they only got us a few and couldn't supply more.
That said, there are many other factors then the manufacturing cost. On the other hand, they are quite well made. I rather liked them for scissor keyboards.
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Not only is R&D expensive but the tooling costs to even retrofit existing manufacturing lines gets very expensive. Trust me I work in the field that actually makes those changes to manufacturing lines and installing new lines.
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M$ needs to recoup from all of the unsold original surface models
The entire surface program was mismanaged horribly from the start. Even after the 2's came out, they only got us a few and couldn't supply more.
That said, there are many other factors then the manufacturing cost. On the other hand, they are quite well made. I rather liked them for scissor keyboards.
Unfortunately haven't tried the premium keyboard but it must be better than the touch!
Hopefully there will be a brighter future for the company post Ballmer era.
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The Type Cover is actually surprisingly good. I had a v1 Surface Pro with it for a few months last year. And as far as the slim line keyboards go, it's probably my favorite. The travel is super short, but the tactile feedback is surprisingly good, with a resounding click.
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The touch cover was... interesting. I like trying new input devices so I tried hard to give it a fair chance. It's not as bad as its worst detractors say but it definitely had problems.
Clearly if you absolutely require tactile feedback, it was completely wrong for you. It feels nothing like a moving-parts keyboard. But that's the wrong point of comparison.
Instead, compare it with a tablet's onscreen keyboard. On-screen keyboards have zero tactile feedback too. The touch cover had extremely low weight and thickness, comparable to any flip cover (the iPad smart cover for example), but keyboard still allowed you to type without giving up half your screen space for an onscreen keyboard. Also, unlike an onscreen keyboard, you can type pretty naturally while the Surface is standing at a mostly-upright angle. (Try typing on an upright screen. Your wrists won't be happy.) And you don't get the screen smudgy with your fingerprints.
There was pretty nice audible feedback. When you typed, the Surface would make an audible click with each keystroke. The click was very low latency, feeling almost instantaneous, and as a confident touch typist I found that it gave me a pretty good sense of exactly when a keystroke had registered. It almost felt like when you pantomime typing on your desk (am I the only one who does this?) except I was magically actually typing.
However, there were two fatal flaws, at least with the first generation touch cover.
First, it was unable to detect keystrokes accurately if you input them too fast. When I got over 40-ish wpm, the keyboard started dropping keystrokes. Absolutely unacceptable. This may have been fixed in the touch cover 2, which has improved sensors, but by then I was too frustrated with the technology to take a chance on another pricey touch cover.
Second, it just felt unfamiliar to most people. My honest feeling is that if Microsoft had worked out the high-speed input problem, and people had been willing to give the keyboard a chance, they would have gotten used to it. People took a while to get used to on-screen keyboards on phones and tablets, but now most people feel comfortable with them and have decent input speeds (albeit still inferior to the speeds achievable with full-sized moving-parts keyboards). I honestly think that a touch typist could eventually get 100+wpm on a touch cover-style keyboard without looking, except to center your hands once in a while, if the device consistently registered keystrokes that quickly. But the Surface is such a weird product family to begin with, it hasn't taken the world by storm like the iPad did (mostly for reasons that don't have much to do with the hardware), and the touch cover just made it feel even more alien. So the market rejected it.
It's too bad. If the touch cover worked as advertised, I might well have kept it as the primary cover. When I pack my Surface Pro 2 it's one of many devices in my travel bag and any weight/thickness reduction is welcome. And of course when I want to use a proper keyboard I've got various mech boards which I can plug in.
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I use a Surface Pro because I don't want to use crappy keyboards. I BMOGDKBs :)
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Don't worry, I'm sure there will be a chinese clone on ebay for $50 or less in short order.