Wireless Illuminated Tiny Keyboard
Here’s a tiny USB dongle wireless keyboard that we wish the Mac Mini would have been shipped with. This 56 character keyboard is actually an update of a similar non-illuminated (and cheaper) version from the same company; looks about the same size as the Acer Aspire One. This lil’ couch surfer’s delight operates up to 10 meters away, using a 2.4 GHz frequency and operates on just 2 AAA batteries which definitely makes it a must have.
Categories: Computers, Peripherals, Ramblings
3 Responses to “Wireless Illuminated Tiny Keyboard”
Why would anyone want to type on a keyboard that jams your fingers together and causes carpal tunnel syndrome? Seriously — you guys must not be writers, who type for a living.
In addition it doesn’t have the numeric keypad which is something that many users will object to automatically (accountants for example) so when a computer manufacturer ships a keyboard with a computer they have to include one that appeals to a majority of users and not just a few.
This type of keyboard is a niche keyboard that will only appeal to a smaller audience so it is not smart to include that with a PC unless it comes as an additional keyboard that you can use instead and that’s rarely the case if ever.
I’m not saying that this type of keyboard doesn’t have its uses cause a small wireless illuminated keyboard may be good for some things like a car computer for example. There are people nowadays that do that sort of thing and for those or for people with very little desktop space it may be acceptable.
Yet another issue that this keyboard has is that the other keys (appart from the standard alphanumeric keys and the numeric keypad) such as the arrow keys and the others are in a different arrangement than most other keyboards.
When you have one computer at home (I have 3 in different locations of the house) and you get use to the position of those keys in the same place is very awkward to change to a different keyboard in another place in the house that has the keys in a different arrangement.
You can get used to a different arrangement in a few days but to change to different key arrangements during the same day in a different computer is annoying to say the least: “¡Oh I hit Page Down instead of Delete again!” and boy how often that happens when that’s the case so I rather have the same keyboard arrangement in all the computers that I have at home and having this keyboard with those odd key positions in one of my computers is just trouble for me.
In laptops the keys are usually compromised because of their size and in that instance you are forced to deal with that but you do that for the sake of portability but if I had a small laptop and it was possible to use a standard keyboard arrangement I wouldn’t trade it for nothing.
I like an illuminated keyboard and such a keyboard that is also wireless is terrific but I personally want one with the keys in a standard arrangement.
There is more to say about standard full size keys. Have you seen how many keyboards have the functions keys reduced in size? So they make the functions keys like half or about 3/5 the standard size vertically? This is also very stupid thinking.
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Then you can see that some manufacturers did it at least to make those trimmed down keyboards that have thin edges around the keys to save desktop space, that at least makes a wee bit of sense but still I would not trade standard full size keys for that. But you see the more stupid manufacturing when you see those function keys reduced in size but when you look above them the keyboard is very wide at the top with more than enough room to accommodate full size function keys!
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So let’s say that they do this to economize plastic, really? they are going to save that much plastic with that? When a full size cheap keyboard that has the functions keys in standard size can cost $7 in some places nowadays?
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Now, I can understand than with higher quality mechanisms or higher quality letters imprinting it can cost more but don’t tell me that the amount of plastic needed for full size function keys can be that much more expensive because in the cheapest keyboards the mechanism may not be the best (and despite this I have had some of those that lasted me years of constant use) and despite the mechanism not being that good the plastic is good enough in most of those cheap keyboards.
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So tell me in the name of God why do they make the function keys smaller? This is plain old stupidity and that is all there is to it. As they put it so eloquently in the movie Airplane II “Brilliant” and “A must see”.
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Full size function keys are more comfortable to use that half size ones and no amount of inventing or “ingenuity” can change that fact cause you can’t change the fundamental fact that there has to be at least a minimum of full size keys for a keyboard to be fully functional.
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So until somebody invents voice recognition that is good enough and can reject background noise well enough (and is getting pretty good but it still has a bit of trouble with too much background noise) we still have to use keyboards and even if they perfect that enough some people ignore completely that we may still have to use keyboards when we want privacy when we are creating a message and we don’t want somebody to overhear what we are sending.
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The keys can be slightly more packed together and what I mean with that is that the arrows keys and the numeric keyboard can be a bit closer to each other as in some more modern keyboards but if they have no space at all between those then is bad because that space allows you to easily recognize the location of those keys with relation to the others in the keyboard and that is another fundamental that in my opinion is just stupid to ignore.
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There are some manufacturers that even change the layout of the inverted T of the arrow keys and that is another big no no because that has become such a de facto standard layout that most people are used to finding them in that position and when they do not find them in that position in a keyboard they find it strange and odd, as simple as that, that is the feeling that you get when that happens and there you go again having to adapt and if you have more than one computer at home as I already said, problems again.
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So when I go to shop for a keyboard the very first thing I look at is the keys arrangement and size and if they are not in a standard arrangement and in full size I will not buy that keyboard no matter how many bells and whistles it has, no matter how pretty it looks and no matter how “high end” its features are, if it doesn’t comply with those minimum requirements and forgoes the fundamentals and the standards I will look elsewhere for another keyboard, period.