Well, I don't know Paul Dietz was the guy I mentioned (though it seems quite likely).
I wouldn't say it's fair to accuse him/them of trolling.
(I would happily accuse Ripster of trolling. You understand well the geeknerd mindset ... though utterly lacking in social skills or non-WoW etiquette forms of any sort, any geeknerd worth his salt will endlessly prattle on explaining and expounding his vastly specialized knowledge ... I think it's a natural mechanism which nerds use to find compatible nerd partners to bond with, a perverse analog of the social interactions other animals use to attract mates.)
It seems fair to say these engineers are experts on the topic, after all they are the ones who design the keyboards many many thousands of people will purchase. Each of their decisions, tradeoffs, compromises, faults, and improvements can have noticeable impact which people could talk about for years. If they blunder *coughVistacough* then the corporate image suffers and **** rolls downhill when the marketing teams begin to notice declining profits/revenue.
In my particular instance the guy was quite helpful, he didn't answer all of my questions but still offered a number of unsolicited tips which I'm confident let me avoid some common pitfalls while getting a healthy head start on my project.
I understand engineering quite well; I know that whether the engineer is passionate or disgruntled makes a big difference. I know that (contrary to popular misconceptions) most real engineering efforts are dedicated to improving the manufacturing process instead of the manufactured product. And I know that these poor bastards often have to endure stressful deadlines, bureaucratic idiocy, incompetently haughty managers, pencil-counting accountants, endless reports and technical documents, and the (sometimes false) assumption that every other part the other engineers are working on will always work exactly right. (Those problems are sometimes diverted to non-engineering experts, but not always.)
Personally, I'm a little shocked and disgusted that Microsoft would use membrane tech on a mid-priced (circa $100) keyboard. It's corner-cutting and clearly shows where mass-produced keyboards are all going to be in a few years; Microsoft has learned (from examples like Unicomp, etc) that there's no sustainable profit in building keyboards that last for decades. They're cheap (though not inexpensive) and they're disposable. Consumers don't truly "know" what quality is anymore, and (for the most part) only equate quality expectations with brand name recognition and price comparisons - everybody knows that you get what you pay for and lower prices are not always the bargain they appear to be - but most have never purchased (high priced) products with real quality so they don't have a useful experiential reference frame. Ergo, the humble keyboard, soon to be yet another cheapass mass-disposable uncommodity like most cellphones and laptops.
Since "my" MS guy is an expert on analog signalling I suspect that his job is all about trying to design keyboard matrices that use multiplexed ADC signalling methods. Microsoft's PSK and "optimus minimus" are obvious applications of the method, and the X4's "resistive multitouch" is probably just a way to recycle this new idea in such a way that screenprinted circuit components will functionally replace more costly discrete diodes.
Anyhow, not trying to badmouth the guy, I actually thank him for volunteering to unobfuscate common misconceptions, and he certainly saved me a lot of time and frustration. But he's got a job to do just like everybody else, even though his just happens to be for evil Microsoft.
