Flexiglow Illuminated Keyboard

BigMan writes "You probably have seen a few of these keyboards (illuminated) before but this one is from Flexiglow who are known for making very nice modd products. We will look closer into this and see how bright it really is and if it's nice to type on and use."

Comments

Extra features

[titaniam]

Comes with a bottle of spf 45 sunscreen and a pair of sunglasses as well.

Re:Extra features

[x0n]

At least I can get an all-over "CRT tan" now; this will get to those hard to reach spots under the chin.

How often do you look at you keyboard?

[DAldredge]

How often do you look at your keyboard? I rarely look down at my keyboard when I am typing. I mean, it isn't that hard to learn to type.

Re:How often do you look at you keyboard?

[NotAnotherReboot]

I concur...on top of that, do you really want your keyboard distracting you if you don't ever look at it? On top of that, even if you did need to look down from time to time, the only time you wouldn't be able to see it is at night (and even then, your monitor would probably illuminate it enough).

You shouldn't be using a computer in the dark anyways, the contrast between the sceen and the wall is far too high. It hurts your vision.

Re:How often do you look at you keyboard?

[P-Nuts]

You shouldn't be using a computer in the dark anyways, the contrast between the sceen and the wall is far too high. It hurts your vision.

You're clearly not a true geek.

Re:How often do you look at you keyboard?

[bob_jordan]

Its not about usability, its about getting an all round tan. My three monitor setup works well but I've been looking a little pale under the chin. This is just what I've been looking for.

Bob.

Re:How often do you look at you keyboard?

[Bozdune]

On my desktop? Never. On my laptop? A lot, everything is ctrl-meta-mumbled due to lack of space. But this product doesn't help me, because the whole point of the laptop is not to have to carry around a keyboard (or anything else, for that matter, with the possible exception of a mouse).

But if somebody shipped a LAPTOP with an illuminated keyboard -- now you're talking. As long as battery life doesn't go to hell, that is. I know, the light could be turned on with a keystroke... shit, never mind.

Re:How often do you look at you keyboard?

[toasted_calamari]

Apple ships their 15" and 17" laptops with illuminated keyboards. I've used them, and they work really well. Only the print on the keys light up, rather than the entire key like the flexiglow. It doesn't appear to kill the batteries to badly, and the light and screen intensity are controlled automatically by light sensors.

Re:How often do you look at you keyboard?

[Martin Kallisti]

IBM's X31 laptops, and probably most others in the same series, come with a little light installed at the top of the screen, which can be switched on to illuminate the keyboard if in darkness. It is not nearly as pretty as Apple's Powerbook solution, but it works well enough.

What are you relaly lighting up?

[pierced2x]

Just what I need, something to light up all my chip crumbs and small bits of Hot Pocket on the keyboard...

Thank you Flexiglow for making this review possibl

[DAldredge]

"Thank you Flexiglow for making this review possible" is at the bottom of the first page, is there any wonder they gave the unit a 5 out of 5?

I like these...

[Cyno01]

I've been drooling over EL keyboards ever since i saw the EluminX, and will probably get a knockoff for my next system, but when is somone going to make a full keyboard. By full i mean a seperate block for the arrow keys, the 3x2 block of insert/home/delete etc. and a little seperation betweek the main section and the F keys. It sucks for gaming having the arrow keys in with everything else.

This is not new.

[eagle8635]

I think this product is new, but the concept of a lighted keyboard is not new, they have been selling one on Think Geek for years.

Re:Thank you Flexiglow for making this review poss

[modder]

The "1" "2" "3" and "4" keys were not illuminated at the time this was written, due to a "malfunction".

keyboard review

[SlashReality]

As far as reviews go I'd have to say I found that to be fairly good. It described the size, use, what comes in the package etc. However what was lacking is what the actual Slashdot Article heading describes as "how bright it is". They say "It is really bright!" So...is it distracting? Can you see the keys if you forget where % or ^ is?

"It has 18 multimedia keys squeezed into this tiny keyboard to make your surfing even easier." So are they hard to push? Is it easy to find the correct button and only push that one button? Another gripe I have is that they did not reference the size to something universal such as a quarter or pencil in their picture showing it's size. However I liked their description of how it felt to type on the keys, and that it was quiet instead of making that clicky noise. I think I'm going to invest in one of these sometime soon, but I can't say it will be soley based on this review.

Tips for newbie "reviewers"

[SuperBanana]

Ok, obviously this is your first (does the Dr. Evil quotes thing) "review", so here's a tip or two.

• change first-person pronouns to third person pronouns in the marketing drivel you received from the manufacturer which you have cut+pasted into your "review".
• Spell-check your article so you don't do moronic things like mis-spell "bright". Don't forget proper punctuation. Both will help you appear to be more than just the 2 16-year-olds you are.
• you don't need to "thank" the manufacturer. They're plenty happy that you wrote a glowing(if badly spelled) review and will let you keep the keyboard.
• Invent something, anything, to complain about, no matter how trivial, to give the paper-thin illusion of impartialness.

I would suspect that the only reason this got posted was because ThinkGeek sells the same keyboard, or one very close to it- I know because they heavily advertise it here on slashdot. It is pathetic that this was considered front-page news.

Aside from that- god, these knock-offs suck compared to Apple's. I have a powerbook 17", and the backlit keyboard only glows around through letters/numbers/symbols(a teeny bit leaks from between the keys). From what I recall it's either one or two LEDs with fiber optics to distribute the light evenly. Works perfectly, and it even sets its own brightness level...none of these knock-offs even have a brightness adjustment.

News?

[wan-fu]

News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. This article was a product review of a pointless device. Slow news day, editors?

only one color

[SuperBanana]

I remember hearing about the Apple TiBook 17" having a keyboard which glowed different colours for various alerts.

I'm typing on one right now, and the only color it does is white. It's one(or two, I can't remember) LEDs connected to the keyboard via fiber optics. The LEDs are on the right side, either under or next to the keyboard.

Brightness is controlled by software that polls two ambient light sensors under the speaker grilles; it doesn't even come on unless it gets fairly dark. You "train" the display and keyboard backlights over time; it learns what ambient light level equals what adjustment. The backlight actually can make the letters/numbers the same "brightness" as light reflected off the keyboard, making them essentially disappear, which is a little odd.

The keyboard backlighting is great for planes, dark meeting rooms, etc...but beyond that it's a novelty. The automatic screen backlight adjustment is actually much more useful. If you get tired of it you can even set it back to manual...

Re:it would be cool..

[TeknoHog]

make every button programmable, so it could be used as an audio spectrum visualisation or something.

I agree this would be awesome. Also, a program to teach touch typing might use this to illuminate a key you need to find, thus you'd more easily find and learn the positions of keys.

In fact many many programs would benefit if they could illuminate the keys used at any moment. I'm sure this is already done in touchscreen systems. Then again, a programmably illuminated keyboard is a kind of touchscreen in itself. If it were available, I'm sure someone could hack it into a display console of some kind. For example, you could pipe text into it by illuminating letters in succession.

However, as a touch typist and a Discordian I don't want anything of the Illuminati kind on my desk ;-)

Re:Mirror , just in case

[blincoln]

While you may be legitimately trying to provide some help here, I am starting to get the impression that your account was made for karma whoring and/or trying to advertise your business, given that you've done this with every single front page story today as far as I can tell.

Mirroring people's content without their permission is probably not something they would take kindly to. I know that I would rather have the site I run go down than be sitting on a webserver I have no control over.

This is also a site which depends on advertising revenue. It may be a ghetto mod site whose writers have a poor grasp of spelling and grammar, but it is still unethical to deprive them of their ad fees by leeching away their viewers to your mirror.

Finally, the site is holding up just fine. I don't see any reason for a mirror to be necessary at all.