Compatibility of USB Numpad

[sinis]

Hi everyone,


My current keyboard is a mess to play games with. I use it extensively for games. All keys around WASD are binded to some action as well as the SHIFT and ALT Modifier. Shift sometimes refuses to funcion. So does the Backspace-key. It just stays in place and I have to hammer on it do push the key.

I am considering to buy a Mechanical Keyboard. I know one of the old Cherry Keyboards, that once was mine, but I cannot find it anymore. I know that the "tactile" sometimes confused me while gaming.

I am using the keyboard mainly for gaming.
But I am considering to buy a keyboard which will be ok to type on it as well. The reason is the thesis which I am going to write in some months. I thought it would be nice to write it on a keyboard other than my Thinkpads. Which is quite nice though. So I have chosen brown cherry switches allready.

Due to the availability here in Germany, the only keyboard, which offers this, is the Filco, which I
can get at "getdigital.de". Due to the price it is a big purchase for me so I hope it will last some time.
I also found the ebay guy "aminglau", but no brown cherries there except the KBC Poker.

Since I am studying Natural Sciences, I have to type a load of numbers in form of measuring-data sometimes. I would rather have a numpad, since I can type numbers with it much faster. So I would love to buy a tenkeyless from "the keyboard company" and add an extra USB-numpad to it. So I can use the Numpad, when I need it, with my Thinkpad or with my Desktop-PC.

And here is my question:
- Do you have any concerns about the compatibility of the USB-numpad with Windows and especially with Linux?

In my experience, it is safer to use older and common hardware with Linux, so there are allready some workarounds or even drivers to get them running.
I use mainly Linux for work, especially Ubuntu, as well as Windows, since the University forces me to. Google and the searchfunction around here only gives me people, who have questions and problems with this numpads in Linux and MacOS. I just hope someone says its ok and it works perfectly on both OS. I do just want to give in some numbers with this.


I appreciate your help in advance. Greetings from sunny Germany and my beautiful backlit G11 finger-torturing-device.

sinis

[The Solutor]

I think that anything works with linux w/o any problem.

The hid support is mature since ages. And even some special keyboard like the nooppo choc (problematic in OSX) are working flawlessly in linux.

I think you can buy whatever you like, it will work.

Both windows and linux should see the numpad as a separate keyboard completely independent from the first, then they will mix the imput from the two transparently from the user point of view.

[nraymond]

I have a Filco tenkeyless with Cherry Brown keyswitches, and recently picked up the Adesso AKP-220B:



I chose the Adesso for a few reasons - the Filco 'TenKeyPad' FKB22MB is currently hard to come by here in the US, the Adesso was cheaper ($33 shipped from Amazon), and the Adesso has Cherry Blues, which I hadn't tried before.  I plan to do a full review of the Adesso AKP-220B when I get a chance, but in short I can say that it's ok: it has a layout more like a Mac numpad than a PC numpad (and I prefer the Mac numpad, so that's good for me), so far it hasn't had any of the oddities that the Filco showed in OS X as mentioned in this review, and seems to be built ok.  It's a bit on the light side, can't say I love the font, and doesn't have the fit or finish of Filco, but it's ok.  Adesso says that the AKP-220B has n-key rollover, but it actually doesn't.  Not the biggest deal since I don't plan on gaming on the numpad, and doubt I'll encounter too many blocking issues using it, but kind of annoying they couldn't get that info right.  I plan on testing it in Linux at some point too, but I expect it will work as well as it does in OS X.

[nevin]

but I expect it will work as well as it does in OS X.

fantastic. i was looking for a confirmation on compatibility w/mac on the adesso num pad
thanks!