Top 10: Best laptop keyboard

From: John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com>
Date: Mon Feb 21 15:10:06 2000

On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 02:13:10PM -0600, Bill Bradford wrote:
> Surprised I'm the first person to mention these (altho not laptop, they
> fit the 10-year rule):
>
> Northgate Omnikey keyboards.

They're that old? Dee One Systems was selling them new surprisingly recently,
I *almost* love mine but I've got two main complaints:

- why is the autorepeat so fast? if you lean on Del by accident you delete
  half your file, it repeats much faster than the actual rate you program it
  for

- I wish the "=" keypad key sent a different scan code from the one on the
  main keyboard, so I could use it to do an *exact* emulation of the VT100
  keypad, but it seems there's no way to tell them apart

I really like the keyboard otherwise though -- the best of both worlds, it has
all the keys (I'm talking about the Omnikey 102 here), but the function keys
are on the left as god intended, and the Ctrl key is where it belongs too.
Really hated to have to retrain my fingers after all that time using good ol'
well-made 83/84-key keyboards.

I like the *feel* of Focus keyboards, but they just don't last. They've been
around long enough that they only recently dropped the XT/AT mode switch,
but they don't seem to have survived the transition to PS/2 connectors,
and certainly not USB, oh well so much for that.

Anyway IMHO nothing will ever beat the feel and layout of the DEC VT100
keyboard! Or whichever 8-bit luggable cloned it (Kaypro?).

John Wilson
D Bit
Received on Mon Feb 21 2000 - 15:10:06 GMT