I have grown quite happy with Apple’s pro keyboard, and I do like the feel of typing of theirs. For some odd reason I now like their key height and feel over more traditional keyboards, so I am a little leery of plonking down cash for a keyboard that would cost about twice. But if you had one of the standard issue HP keyboards before, this thing must feel like heaven.
I’m going to dig put my old Commodore 64 now, to remind myself of what truly crappy keyboards feel like…
Isn’t that small shift standard for the international layout? I have a US layout version of that keyboard with the longer shift, horizontal enter, etc.
The legs which adjust the angle of the keyboard look like the standard item you see on other keyboards. I find them fiddly and easy to break. Maybe that part of the keyboard could be rethought and beefed up.
Oh, wow, cute. Though the one pictured, that’s the second generation of keyboard, which moved the \ and | back to their normal place above the enter key. On mine, they’re both above the numpad, and the enter key has a little hook upwards.
Allegedly, Steve Jobs was responsible for that decision–he wanted “technical” keys that an ordinary non-computer user would never use moved away from the main part of the keyboard. After a year and the threat of mass revolt by C/objC programmers and unix shell users, they moved it back to the normal place.
At one point in the late 90s and early 2000s, I had around 5 dozen old unix systems from the 80s and 90s. I got rid of all but the NeXT, which was my favorite system of the era. Though since the ethernet went out on it 4 or 5 years ago, I no longer keep it powered up.
There sure was something about the NeXT and NeXTSTEP that made it fun. Last year, I got 4.2 working inside VMWare Fusion so I could fire up some old applications. Nostalgia!
“up to six keys can be pressed at once, which is known as 6-Key USB Rollover. Furthermore, Ctrl, Alt, and Shift do not count towards these six keys, making it possible to to hold up to nine keys simultaneously”
Granted I seriously doubt I’ll need ever more than that, but for 150 damn dollars, why is there any limitation on simultaneous presses? I’ve owned a cheapshit $5 USB gamepad that could handle all 15 distinct buttons (counting each D-pad direction as one) with no problem. The C64 I got in the early 80s shipped with a “piano” demo that mapped the entire home row to piano keys, and they were all responsive at once. I realize esoteric games and keyboard pianos aren’t common use cases, but they’re someone’s use case and it’s clearly technically possible, so why can’t a keyboard that costs as much as 8 keyboards do it?
I’ve got an old Zeos keyboard that’s nearly as indestructible as the M, but I have no way to plug it in and like my Window keys too much these days :-}
It’s kind of funny you say that. Every job I’ve had has required me to do a fair bit of numeric entry and I’d die without a numpad. It has also proven useful in the various math courses I’ve been required to take where homework and quizzes were done using a software system. I go out of my way to make sure my keyboard has a numpad. Different strokes and all that I guess…
If you ever do get together another production run, I would totally be in the market for a uk layout of one of these
One of my employees got back from a trip to china today and has an awesome no-numpad mechanical keyboard, picked it up for £40 and the quality looks ace. I forget what ‘colour’ the keys were, but it was satisfyingly clicky; came with some nice extras too, like alternative coloured WASD, arrows and ESC keys and a few other gubbins.
Damn Chinese and their low price keyboards!
Some imbecile I worked with built a test rack for a flight test aircraft I was on that had this keyboard.
http://www.dovecoteglobal.com/nik.html
It was a happy day when its claims of near indestructability were proved wrong.
I’ve used one of those flexible keyboards before. Typing on it was awful, as each key was like a little plate balanced on top of a bubble. Every time you hit a key your finger would roll one way or the other, and each keypress required a surprisingly large amount of force to register. I was glad I didn’t have to use it very long.
Or you have certain disabilities. It’s hard to type one-handed without checking where your hand is. It’s hard to type with proprioception issues without checking either.
Das Keyboard: the fixie of keyboards.
As for some of the other comments, I’m curious why @anon18417063 says this
is “just like the Das Keyboard” which isn’t even backlit, for
starters… the details here really matter, so pay attention. And if
you don’t think the details matter – this is not the product you’re
looking for.
As others have mentioned, for most people serious about their keyboards/typing, the backlit keyboard is really sort of gimmicky/unnecessary. The CODE is a good value, and good for you for going ahead and making something, but I just don’t see it really push beyond where a lot of other manufacturers (Filco, PFU, Leopold, Topre, etc) have been doing (assuming one doesn’t care about the backlight).
To me, I would have been much more excited if the CODE lived up to its name and mainstreamed what the enthusiast communities have been doing - using microcontrollers and open source firmware for full customization (and selling a variety of reasonably priced alternate keycaps).
BTW, more important for gaming than typing, but the QPAD MK-85 and Noppoo Choc Mini 84 have full NKRO for USB (the Choc Mini is more up my alley, but needs some workarounds in OS X due to bad HID descriptors).
Blue and Green and Brown and Clear, White and Red and Black.
I can make a… what in the hells have I made!!
Valid point. But would a lit keyboard really help much in that case? (I suppose if you’re typing in the dark…)
I don’t touchtype, and sometimes I’d like to type in the dark. For a while I had a Lenovo ThinkPad with a little… well, porchlight mounted above the screen that would illuminate the keyboard from above when activated. I do miss that feature on the laptops I’ve owned since. Suppose I could just learn to type…
That’s basically my take. If the backlighting is your first choice when asked to name a distinguishing feature, I’m simply not your target market. Which is fine, but I’m trying to figure out what the target market is, so I know who I might want to inform about the product.
Presumably it’s the perfect keyboard for its designers, but I’m having trouble making the specific features called out add up to a vision statement beyond"that’s what suits my own preferences."
Making it a genuine smart/programmable peripheral would at least have gotten my attention. I’m not a twitch-gamer so I’m not sure I need that in a keyboard, but in fact I do need to build myself a nontraditional keyboard-like controller at some point and I’m interested in seeing what folks think of to do along those lines. (Biggest thing holding me up is that I really need to figure out how to spec the buttons/keys… or I need to get my paws on a whole batch of different ones and see which feels right, which is much harder now that electronic-supply storefronts have become a dying breed.)
