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A Glance At 24 Keyboards & Mice
robyn217 writes "Hey, KBs and mice aren't the most glamorous hardware in your system but there's no reason for them to be dull. I spent the last month testing out a new keyboard and mouse every day; covering everything from strange one-handed KBs to cool gesture-sensing pads to tacky ball-based mice. Check it out if you're thinking about trading up." Strictly one-paragraph blurbs here (I wish she'd talked about each keyboard's tactile feedback, and long-term comfort on the oddball designs), but if you need to do a visual scan of current offerings (many wireless), you can work toward a new mouse by clicking your way through. Update: 01/21 21:58 GMT by T : Errr, Robyn's a He, not a She -- many apologies. That hasn't happened in years!
Any one handed keyboards, like the twiddler? They use these for the MIThril wearable project. Some modification required. Location-Based Wi-Fi
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think that the best keyboard ever made was the IBM Model M PS/2 keyboard. It's got individual springs for each of the keys, the keys give satisfying clicks, the keycaps are removable, and it's even got a nifty drainage hole on the bottom. It'll even double as a baseball bat in a pinch (steel baseplate). I'm here at work typing on a Dell laptop keyboard which, frankly, is a steaming pile of crap.
All these newfangled keyboards with their plastic membranes and mushy keys. I'll take my Model M any day.
~The log of the limit is equal to the limit of the log.
Better reviews of keyboards and mice can be found here:
Keyboard reviews
Mouse reviews
-JemI have a Kinesis Advantange USB keyboard, replacing an older Advantage PS/2 keyboard hooked up to my mac via an unreliable PS/2->USB adapter.
It's wondrous. I think switching four years ago to Kinesis has saved my hands. I was developing chronic, persistent wrist pain from using my old IBM bucking-spring steel job -- still the best of the flat keyboards -- and was at my wit's end, when the ergo woman at my workplace brought a Kinesis by for me to try.
Heaven! Keeping the wrists straight, even with my monster hands, has taken enormous strain off of them, and as a result, no more pain.
In addition, I use a Kensington Expert Mouse Pro trackball (the USB one with four buttons and a scroll wheel), and switch it from left to right every couple of weeks. When I'm out with the powerbook, I use the Apple Pro mono-button mouse, which I dearly, dearly love as well.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
USB mice have a refresh rate of only 125Hz. A ps/2 mouse can be run at 200Hz with a program called ps2 rate (was for 98 not sure if it works for xp) so your ps/2 mouse can actually run smoother than your USB. Also I recall that I had a logitech ps/2 mouse whose driver had a refresh rate setting.
A better question is: what's right about PS/2? Answer: nothing. It's not hot-swappable. The mouse/keyboard ports are physically identical, but logically distinct -- the most shit-stupid design mistake possible. What if you want more than one mouse? Keyboard?
In sum: good riddance to bad rubbish.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
One poorly written anti-Dvorak article has had more press in the last several years than the Dvorak keyboard itself. Written by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis, it has been published in journals, magazines, and web sites again and again and again -- even though The Dvorak Keyboard author Randy Cassingham debunked it years ago.:
http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html
"I agree with L&M on another thing: there is a need for good-quality, unbiased studies on Dvorak. The best raw data I have access to at present is from KEYTIME, a Seattle-based company which uses keyboard instructional technologies they developed in house. In the past nine years, they have trained several hundred typists on Dvorak, and several thousand on Qwerty, using the exact same equipment and teaching methodologies. They have "repeatedly found" that after 15 hours of training and practice time, existing Qwerty hunt-and-peck typists can touch type at an average 20 WPM. After 15 hours of training and practice on Dvorak, similarly able (Qwerty) typists consistently average 25-30 WPM touch-typing on Dvorak. Further, KEYTIME reports that the Dvorak typists continue to improve at a higher rate. They have noticed a recent "a change in tide" of students wanting to learn Dvorak over Qwerty. "
They use a different pin for data. Laptops have a single PS/2 connector which works for both mice and keyboards, and with a splitter cable they can be plugged in at the same time.
The question is, why don't all PS/2 ports have both data pins? I guess you could confuse your system with, say, two keyboards, because the system can't handle them separately. Thus I agree that USB would be a lot better.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I'll back up the other comment about this.
My logitech MX500 and Trackball are both run through PS/2 ports (home and work respectively). This is to take advantage of the higher report rates that PS/2 supports vs the 100 reports/s on USB.
Now, why would I need this? 100 report/s still looks jerky to me, and that's annoying thing to deal with when I'm working in CAD software. It's still a preference thing, but PS/2 is STILL better for a mouse in my book, but I guess a keyboard doesn't need it anymore.
So, when's lunch?
PC hardware tends to survive getting wet -- as long as two things are true:
1) There is no current running through it while it gets wet.
2) The mixture is not heavily filled with sugar or caramel (like Coke).
3) You let it dry out before you run current through it.
Even monitors usually survive a downpour if they have been unplugged for a day or so before you leave them in the rain.
Found this out while working for a charity thrift store. People would just throw their old junk up on the dock on the day we were closed, a good portion of that time it would rain.
So coffee (with sweet-n-low) doesn't surprise me. Coffee with sugar is more problematic. Pepsi & Coke tend to kill anything with moveable parts.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
On a whim, I decided to check the signal-to-noise ratio on this site's content by taking a screenshot of the full page (165x600 pixels, reduced) and measuring the actual content area (93x100 pixels, reduced by same factor).
A little area calculation later, the signal to noise for PCMag.com is: 93:897 (ie: noise factor of 9.645 times the signal). I will never visit that site out of choice again.
--
The best part about PS/2 is that it is assigned its own interrupt and does not have to share with anything else. Frequently you will end up having your USB controller shared with your video, SCSI, etc, and thus causing more latency whenever a USB event arrives. With PS/2, it's the mouse, and just the mouse, on that interrupt.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web