Searching for Keyboards Loaded with Features?

halfgeek asks: "I was just considering how keyboard-centric I've managed to make my setup, even under the mouse-hungry Windows GUI (no shouting; I regularly SSH to my Linux routing box for experiments, bring up VMWare when I need some X, and can't live without Cygwin). Almost everything I would want to do can be done without moving a hand to the mouse. I can open up an SSH to my server with Win+Shift+V, bring up a calculator with Win+C, run a one-shot console command with Win+0, open up the MW dictionary website to a highlighted word by hitting Ctrl+C (to copy) and then Win+Enter (to look up the contents of the clipboard). (Much of this is implemented with Perl programs and WinKey.) I also make frequent use of the volume knob and mute button built into my Logitech keyboard. If there is any good route to finding the keyboard I want with all the features I'm thinking of at a justifiable price, whether prefabricated or a wicked mod, I would just love to know about it." There are quite a few options the submitter is looking for, but it basically boils down to is this: the more keys, the better. What keyboards have you found, in your browsing travels, that have been stuffed full of useful features?

"I'm aggravated over having the mouse still so separate from the keyboard, and I've been looking through the available options along the lines of keyboards with built-in touchpads. The closest I've found to what I want seems to be the Adesso WKB-120, but this is by no means the ideal choice. It does have three basic properties I want: One, it doesn't have the ergo-split form I so despise. Two, its touchpad is situated in the right place, just below the space bar. Three, it's all one piece, so I can keep the board off the desk and on my knees, where it belongs, eh. But it also appears to have those three intensely undesirable and horribly misplaced power management keys, and lacks the volume knob, mute button, and media controls. An illuminated keyboard would also be cool, but I'd take standard beige; it's just that my current black keyboard is hard to see in the dark."

Comments

The most useful keyboard for me.

[AtariAmarok]

The most useful keyboard for me is a standard keyboard:

Nice standard wide space bar, without the never-used Windows keys

Backslash above a regular-height enter key (no double-high enter key with the backslash in any of 5 other locations).

Standard layout, not the "think before you hit every key" (un)natural keyboard.

The superior tactile click of the IBM keyboard from the PC-AT era. I don't think these are around any more, and nothing still even comes close.

If there is one thing that should be standard, it is a keyboard layout. Extras are fine, as long as they are outside of the regular key area, which should be left alone. It is pretty unreasonable to have to learn different touch typing for different keyboards: the basics should stay the same. Nothing more frustrating than trying to hit the blackslash and then realizing it is one of those perverse Logitech or E-One keyboards that has "more enter key" where the backslash is.

Windows is the best mouseless UI there is

[farnsworth]

even under the mouse-hungry Windows GUI

Are you insane? I don't care for Windows, but it is the most advanced mouseless UI there is. You can do everything without even having a mouse plugged in at all. The same cannot be said for gnome/kde or X in general. Granted, Windows is decidedly not a CLI, like your ssh sessions, but it's still the best there is if you don't like to use a mouse.

I recall reading something about how some beta of windows 95 or NT 3.x failed a DOD acceptance test because a lot of it depended on the mouse, so Microsoft spent considerable time making it work fine in case of mouse failure.