March 2008

Black Rhinos and White Elephants

Gateway keyboard

With great excitement I set off to snap pictures of laptop herds, grazing the shelves of the local Best Buy. Sporting my new macro capable camera and memory card, this was going to be a pictorial review that would rival the Discovery channel’s �Tribes of the Orinoco�. We all know how bad laptop keyboards are. Cramped with missing keys, these are the trophies I seek.

As I entered the store, the smell of fresh electronics sharpened my senses. I found my first large herd fanned out across Brand Name Gulch. Camera in hand I rushed to the front of the herd knowing I was between them and the only outlet. It took some tricky footwork to position a shot of their

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I Hate this Keyboard!

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The word “performance” usually means CPU, memory, disk, or video performance to most people. That’s usually what I mean by it too. But after several months of experience with one particular notebook, I’ve found a component that has destroyed performance more than any other: the keyboard.

When PC Pitstop did a bloatware survey last year, we had several notebook PCs that we couldn’t return. I took one of them, the Toshiba Satellite A135, to use as a Windows Vista test system. Initially, I tried leaving all the preinstalled crapware on the system to see how it would perform. After a few weeks of that, I couldn’t stand it anymore. At least the crapware situation can be fixed, though, unlike the keyboard.

I hate this keyboard.

Take a look

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Optimus Maximus

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Tired of missing the backspace because of a lazy pinky? Need some extra function keys for Gaming? Want to use color to reduce your hunt and peck time? No Problem, make that key any size you want or any function you want. Art Lebedev, of Art Lebedev Studios, is using OLED technology to remedy all the scenarios above and many more. My hardware closet contains at least 12 keyboards so I have no clue how I missed reading about this before now. I do remember some vague comments about OLED technology a few months back, but nothing like what I’ve read today. Optimus Maximus, you will be mine!

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