Asus Reveals the Eee Keyboard 312
El Lobo writes "Asus' success with its Eee line of netbooks might have come as a surprise, but the company is now determined to expand the Eee brand into every possible niche and form factor. Case in point: the insanely cool Eee Keyboard, which will surely bring a smile on the faces of those who remember the glory days of the home computer. Described as a fully functional PC with inset Qwerty key arrangement, the keyboard has a 5in touch screen that displays a suite of bespoke media controls or a Windows desktop."
Channeling Steve Jobs.... (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone's channeling Steve Jobs' these days.
So now you have a lousy keyboard you can't replace with a decent one. It's bad enough on my laptop, but at least there's an excuse for lowering the form factor of the keys way too far... here, there's simply no logical reason for it other than style.
Yep, it's Apple style all right. If it doesn't come with OS X, why put up with the abuse?
Re:It is the new 64. (Score:5, Informative)
You never used a C64 with a 1541 drive did you?
The old C64 used a serial version of the IEE-488 bus to connect drives and printers. It allowed dasy chaining of one drive to another and usually ended with a printer if you had one.
Re:It is the new 64. (Score:3, Informative)
The apple disc controller was for discs only. My //c had an internal 5.25, and an external 5.25, and chained through that was an external 3.5". (800k) It had a chain-through as well and I could have added another I think.
You kids. (Score:3, Informative)
You have no idea.
I've used a TI 99/4. I've actually tried typing programs into an original IBM PCjr. I used extensively, and almost bought, an Atari 400.
What do they have in common with each other, and this keyboard?
Crappy, short throw, lousy-feedback keys.
If you think you're seeing an old-timer smiling in nostalgic pleasure at this thing, you've mis-identified a grimace of remembered pain.
Re:Channeling Steve Jobs.... (Score:2, Informative)
Hint: You can plug any USB keyboard into any Mac (including MacBooks) with a USB port.
I recommend this one [yahoo.net], which has 2 downstream USB ports on it, but YMMV.
Re:Fond memories (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Suggestion... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not quite what I would want (Score:5, Informative)
Wouldn't it be better if the media center itself were a plain, small and silent box (like the Apple TV) to which this neat keyboard could be connected wirelessly?
They already do one!
The Eee Box [wikipedia.org] is a small, plain, (almost) silent PC with wifi that comes with a mounting bracket so you can bolt it to the back of your flat monitor or TV via the four VESA mount holes.
RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
FTA:
Re:Fond memories (Score:5, Informative)
>>>You're thinking of the Atari Vic-20. All those models you named were Commodore models.
I always find it amusing when somebody tries to correct somebody else, but fraks it up. Atari VIC-20. Ha! The original poster was correct with his listing of Atari computers. The key models (not an exhaustive list) from that era were:
Commodore PET, VIC-20, 64, and Amiga (1000 was the first, followed by 500 and 2000)
Atari 400, 800, 400XL, 800XL, and the ST. Also the 2600, 5200, and 7800 which were videogame consoles.
Apple II, IIc, IIe, and Macintosh
IBM PC, XT, PCjr, and PS/2
It's a shame that Atari and Commodore are no longer around. It was fun watching all the various formats compete with one another for dominance. Commodore's Amiga line could do things neither Macintosh nor the PCs can do, even today.
Re:Channeling Steve Jobs.... (Score:3, Informative)
> I can't work intensively on my laptop for more than 10 or 15 minutes without significant pain.
You're doing it wrong.
Actually individually inset keys, if done right, are ergonomically better. They also confer several advantages if you're basically willing to give up the EXPERIENCE of a keyboard with a huge travel on the keys - keys are spaced better, so it's easier to hit the key you want, and they're all at the same height, on a flat base, meaning you're basically not lifting your wrists and therefore completely cutting out the need for wrist rests.
Some people don't like them - me included at one point - because they're DIFFERENT, and it takes a while to adjust your posture and typing style to suit the keys, but once you do (and quit lumbering at it like a gorilla, bashing keys with your knuckles) it gets a whole lot better and productivity goes up.
As for the pain, I have to live through every day with some kind of arthritic pain anyway, a bit of discomfort on a keyboard is something I experience with every kind, it actually got better with the Apple.
I have yet to see an actual ergonomic study that shows that Apple keyboards (or Vaio keyboards or this keyboard) is actually bad for you, in any way that any other keyboard is bad for you.
Re:Bam! Power Supply (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I have a few laptops like that where I've removed the LCD. Bingo: keyboard computer. I mainly use them as printer servers and the like; you just lug a small LCD panel over when you need a screen, or use VNC.
In any case, if it's the backlight gone, chances are its the inverter board. This provides voltage to the LCD panel, but usually sits at the top edge of the keyboard part. Its usually integrated on a small board about the size of an old fashioned memory SIMM that usually has a few model specific LEDs or maybe switches. It's fairly easy to replace; you can get a new part for around $70, used parts taken from junker computers go from $5 to $10. If you've done it before for a certain model, the repair takes less than ten minutes; it might take several times that if you have to Google a guide for taking apart your laptop. It's pretty much the easiest repair there is, that users are not expected to be able to do.
And it's still... (Score:3, Informative)
... non-ergonomic.
I'm sorry, but we live in two-thousand-fuckin'-nine! Give me a real keyboard [datahand.com], or at least the closest affordable thing [datadesktech.com]. (Now unfortunately defunct.):
'Nuff said...
Re:Fond memories (Score:5, Informative)
Arguably you can have different fullscreen resolutions on DOS/Windows/Linux too. What the Amiga had over them was the ability to show multiple screens at the same time, but since only the horizontal resolution could change you would not be able to use this for 320x200 and 720x480.
1440x480 and 720x480 works, 640x200 and 320x200 works, but not 320x480 and 320x200.
This limitation comes from CRT monitors. They have to resynch to change vertical resolution, this because images are drawn from top to bottom in a series of lines going from left to right. The end of a line is technically ended by a synch signal, so to change vertical resolution (the amount of lines) you have to change this synch signal - which cause the monitor to go 'boink' as it resynchs to the new synch signal.
Horizontal resolution is, OTOH, simply a product of how fast the Amiga can change its color output - which tops out at something like 1280 pixels.
Re:Fond memories (Score:3, Informative)
You could certainly mix and match screens at different horizontal and vertical resolutions. The key to understand this was realizing that Amiga Amiga video was always based on a ~35ns pixel clock, and could deliver pixels of one, two, or four clocks per pixel.. thus your (nominally) 1280, 640, or 320 pixels per scanline (a bit more using the overscan region of the screen).
Vertical resolution was always the same, 480 lines (NTSC, no overscan... more in PAL, naturally). However, you could set up a 240 line mode that just automatically scan-doubled.
Those limits, and the fact you had the Copper (video coprocessor) available to automatically change all those display registers at any scanline, made the Amiga's screens concept easy.
It wouldn't work on a modern computer graphics card, though. On modern systems, any given screen setup has independent control of the pixel clock time... that's ultimately how you can set refresh rate independently of resolution. The pixel clock is generated using a phase-locked loop, which will typically take a short period of time to lock to a new rate.... possible a whole video frame's worth of time (that's why modern PC screens "jump" when you change resolution). You monitor may or may not need its own resync, but the graphics card is the first problem here.
The Advanced Amiga Architecture (never finished) has some crazy bits to allow sliding screens at different resolutions. It allowed four different pixel clocks to be present at the same time (alas, it didn't generate these, they were left as an exercise for the systems engineer), and there was a double line-buffer as well, which could do pixel duplication and line multiplying. So, along with clever software, it would have been reasonable to support multiple sliding screens at multiple resolutions.