By Dave Conde
Look down for a second. Yep, it's your keyboard. You probably don't even notice it anymore. Did you know that it reveals a lot about your personality? And I'm not just talking about the bloodstains on the Control Key or the fungus growing on the crumbs that fell between the keys. I mean deep personality flaws that you think nobody knows about, but we can see them, right there beneath your fingertips.
1. The Basic Keyboard
This here's our baseline. It's the keyboard that comes bundled with your standard home computer along with a mouse and some tinny speakers. There's nothing wrong with it, if you're somebody's grandma, logging in to your AOL dial-up account to read the interwebs.
2. The Saitek Cyborg Keyboard
This keyboard is perfect for hunching over on a Friday night and critiquing a Michael Knight/Spock slash Fanfic (''The K.I.T.T./Enterprise subplot was totally unbelievable. Sure, K.I.T.T. may have his bad-boy, TransAm looks and proper gentleman voice, but the Enterprise is devoted to her Captain, despite his many daliances with alien ho.... Oh, sorry, back to the article). Of course, the cyborg is designed for gaming, with illuminated, metal-reinforced keys and gold-plated USB and audio sockets. This will totally impress all your friends. You know, the ones who you've never met in person, but they're always cool to you in-game, except when they hog all the loot. But you're pretty sure at least one of them's a chick, of the five that say they're girls. Maybe. Awww %$@# them all! You've got a better keyboard than they do.
Also known as the Virtually Indestructible Keyboard, this keyboard sounds like a good idea on paper. Flexible enough to roll into a cylinder, you can shove it into a bag and not worry about damaging it. Encased in plastic, the keyboard will withstand your average coffee spill with ease. Unfortunately, it sucks to type on. The keys, notably the caps lock, are easy to press accidentally. Balancing that out is the fact that if you type with any kind of speed a third of your keystrokes won't register, so maybe that's OK. If you need a keyboard to use in the first five rows at Sea World or or a Gallagher performance, buy this one. Otherwise, get a sippy-cup.
OMG! WTF! Where do I begin? It's made by a company called ''Wolfking.'' It's exclusively for ''Warriors'' like yourself. It's totally ''Xxtreme.'' The ''Innovative Design'' makes it almost impossible to use by anyone who knows how to type. This is ''The world's first one - handed keyboard that is specifically designed and configured for RPG & FPS games'' freeing your other hand for, um, games. At least they didn't call it ''XXXtreme.'' This keyboard tells the world that you have given up on using you computer for anything other than marathon counterstrike and gold farming. Way to contribute to society, dude.
5. Virtual Laser Keyboard
In today's hustle-bustle mobile world this keyboard almost sounds like a great idea. This tiny box works with your phone (or other device/computer, but probably your phone), wirelessly through Bluetooth and uses frickin' lasers to project a keyboard on any flat surface. Then it uses a camera to detect where your fingers are to track which virtual key you are virtually typing. Pretty cool, eh?
Now try this experiment: put your fingers on a standard tabletop. Now start whacking your fingers into the table as though you were typing. Keep it up for a few minutes. Kinda hurts, doesn't it? Not a lot, but I bet you don't want to do it anymore. Maybe you'd build up calluses but really, there's a reason why keyboards have little springs under the keys.
Besides, most of the time I'm typing on my Blackberry I'm standing up so this wouldn't work anyway. If you are going to type the great, American novel at the corner Starbucks, you're going to bring your laptop. And the last one of those I saw had a keyboard built right in.
6. Das Keyboard
What makes this keyboard pretentious? Is it the black on black color scheme? Is it the fact that it's German-engineered with ''gold-plated mechanical key switches''? Maybe it's because the manufacturers do not debase their product with base letters and numbers, choosing instead to leave each key free of printing and filled with potential? Or it could be the caption that they put on their picture: ''The best keyboard on the planet. Period.'' Maybe it's that one.
To be fair, this keyboard should help users improve their typing by forcing them to remember which keys are which instead of looking at the letters. It would also be good for people who have abandoned the QWERTY keyboard layout in favor of the better-designed Dvorak layout. Or people who don't care what they type and just like pressing button
7. Apple
If your dream has always been to type on the side of the Goodyear blimp, then this is the keyboard for you. Not only do the keys light up, but you can set each key to a different color and even have some animation of the patterns. Check out the video:
Looks pretty cool, doesn't it? So many colors and combinations! And when the hell are you going to use it? Are you going to going to watch a little rainbow display in between WOW quests? How many times do you think you can show off your keyboard display to the cute new receptionist at work? The first time will be cute, the second time you're creepy and the third time is harassment.
Here we have the polar opposite of the ''Das Keyboard'' above. Instead of no letters, this keyboard has any letter, number or picture you can think of courtesy of little tiny OLED video screens built into each key. That's right, each and every key has a little, color video display. If you want to switch from QWERTY to Dvorak, fine. Then switch to Cyrillic, Arabic or Japanese. Or make them all pictures for your kindergartner. When you open up Photoshop you can make all the keys correspond to common commands:
Sounds great. Who could object to such a useful product? Let's all run over to ThinkGeek where they have the Optimus Maximus on sale for only $1,589.99. Go ahead and read that again. That does NOT include the computer, it's just the keyboard. Hell, I've bought cars for less than that. What are you going to type that warrants a $1,589.99 keyboard? I would freeze up, unable to come up with anything worth of typing on such a monument to ultimate typing. So, I'll probably just buy a bunch of regular keyboards and put stickers over the keys.
10. Steampunk
Steampunk: all the nerdiness of trekies but with the elitism that comes from knowing actual history and literature. You can get a description here, but basically steampunk is what the world would be like if the sci-fi writers in the 1800's were right. Like Jules Verne and ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.'' Anyone? OK, you know how in the 1950's everyone thought that the future would look like the Jetsons, glass bubbles and fins? Well in the 1800's they thought the future would be all steam-powered with brass trim.
Anyway, this guy who goes by Datamancer, took the precision-crafted guts of the ''Das Keyboard'' and gave it metal keys, a wooden face and a brass frame to make it look like a priceless heirloom. And really, who wouldn't want to type on such an elegant keyboard, from a more civilized age. Imagine clacking away at your steam-driven computer, calculating the balancing effect of tuberculosis on the rising population in the work houses and debtor's prisons? If only.
--Born at a young age, Dave Conde grew into a cold, bitter shell of a man. Who writes things. You can yell at him at androidmanifesto@clear365.com
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Sarah
http://www.thetreadmillguide.com
Posted by: sarah | Sunday, January 04, 2009 at 06:29 PM