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Affordable, Compact Keyboards?
green pizza asks: "I'm in charge of building a lab of internet kiosk-style PCs for my local library. We have already settled on locally built Mini-PCs and will be netbooting the machines into a simplified Linux environment based heavily on JWZ's experiences in this area. We're cramped for space and luckily have been donated plenty of 15" LCDs. The only remaining issue has been keyboards. A supply of generic $5 keyboards would almost work, but we're already short on table space. I would really like to use low profile keyboards, as we have no need for a numeric keypad, F-keys, or media/shortcut keys. The Happy Hacking Keyboard series is almost perfect, but its build quality is overkill and the price is way beyond the $25 or so we'd like to spend. Anyone know of a bargain Google/Froogle is overlooking?"
I have a collection of SIIG Minitouch Plus low-profile keyboards. They are slightly more than $25 but are the perfect form-factor. They have a full-sized CAPSLOCK key suitable for use as a CTRL key.
Kris
Kriston
Go here, then search for all keyboards with "notebook" layout. I'd link to the search directly, but deep linking like that doesn't work on newegg.
I administered a setup like this for a library in the New york area, and our initial keyboards, IBM notebook keyboard/touchpads broke within one month of their first use. We replaced them with IBM Clickity-Clickity Model M keyboards, and they have lasted ever since (about 4 years).
No need for a numeric keypad or fkeys? Never pressed F5 to refresh eh? F2 to open a new location in a browser? heh. Sounds like you need more tables instead of crappy keyboards. Keep in mind that a lot of people are comfortable with a certain kind of keyboard, and giving them laptop-like keyboards with small keys that are hard to type on may just deter their usage and make your whole computer lab project a giant waste of money.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
These are little and fifteen. mini keyboard.
I bought this notbook-style USB keyboard a few weeks ago and have been very happy with it.
This thing is so tiny and thin that cute girls were actually looking at me when I whipped it out of my bag.
The keyboard is pretty good and what I'd expect from a 12" Dell laptop (it's actually substantially better than the keyboard on my Dell Inspiron 2100, a 12" laptop). That said, the keys are small and the backspace key is tiny (read: sucks), but the keyboard still might suit your needs.
"Brevity is the soul of wit." -Polonius, Hamlet.
Compact keyboards might work, but I myself have trouble working with any keyboard that deviates even the slightest bit from "standard". Very slow, lots of mistakes and profanity. And I have a feeling I'm not the only person who dislikes small keyboards. I can't imagine giving people less space than is needed for a standard keyboard and a mouse pad anyways.
http://www.btc.com.tw/english/2-7-06keyboard.htm#
http://www.btc.com.tw/english/2-7-07keyboard.htm#
I got one of these (the 9118) bundled with my Gigabyte TA-1 and it suits it perfectly, fitting nicely with the form-factor of the machine. I think all these models are very similar, with perhaps the 5100c suiting you best; they've got a reasonable action for the price and are available in both USB (with an upstream port built-in -- handy if you wish to allow pendrive access) and straight PS/2.
If you're buying a few of them you might want to fire an e-mail to BTC's US distributor (or ring them) and see what they can do for you -- many resellers put a high markup on these purely 'cause they're small (~USD30), but with a bit of hunting you can probably get them for closer to USD5.