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Ars Technica Reviews Controller Keyboard
phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has reviewed the AlphaGrip AG-5 handheld keyboard and mouse. From the article: 'After lots of research and five revisions, the perfectionists at AlphaGrip finally decided that they had a product worthy of marketing, and they released the long awaited AG-5. Although the AG-5 looks strange and intimidating, it is a unique and highly innovative product that deserves consideration, particularly by mobile computing enthusiasts. The AG-5 interfaces with computers via a single removable USB cable. It uses a simple chord-like keyboarding model and an integrated trackball to provide complete keyboard and mouse functionality in a unique form factor that looks a bit like a console gaming controller.'"
does it get you banned in WoW? :P
"the time required to learn a whole new keyboard layout is seldom worth the reward"
that speeds up the writing of my thesis... But this looks as if I would inevitably start the first-person-shooter of choice.....
It's not really a keyboard is it. They just put letters on the buttons.
Even from a person who has taught himself how to use dvorak ... that looks like a nightmare.
Now that's a death ray!
No ...what we want for the living room:
mobile phone with integrated bluetooth connected laser mouse, keyboard connection based on the numpad using predicitive text mode (customised for operating system & filename stuff) like we do with SMS messages.
hint: your leg makes a great mouse mat (whether standing or stitting)
Once you master it, you can get a job as a court transcriber.
While most mobile users would like to have something more compact, is it really necessary to sacrafice teh productivity of a standard keyboard in order to gain a convenient, compact form factor?
I like the promise that the virtual keyboards have (e.g. http://www.virtualdevices.net/ ). While functionly they have some limitations right now (e.g. having to hold your fingers about the infrared keys), over time they are going to get better. At least this solution you could have a full range keyboard without having to lug it around.
-- Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/
more sense to try to sort of roll the traditional keyboard into that shape, so you're using the same fingers a different way? like have 3+ positions for each finger, so the bottom of the controller would have 3 buttons QAZ on one side and P:? on the other?
This would eliminate the only exercise they get (typing!). Besides, it requires TWO HANDS.
Also, from the article: If we are successful, the AG-5 will turn out to be just a glimpse of the future of desk-free computing. Desk-free? Where am I going to put my coffee cup?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
'I can comfortably compute while reclining in my chair, and I no longer have to lean forward to type, a feature that is particularly nice when I'm doing lots of web browsing.'
...Is how is it going to effect people with RSI. Having something which looks relativly heavy and having to hold it up for a longish period at a time isn't going to be good for your wrists (not that a keyboard is much better tbh)
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"I suppose my pedantically compulsive nature and capacity for data retention made it easier for me to assimilate the layout."
It seems to me that without wireless support via Bluetooth (not the USB wireless that they promise real soon now), this keyboard/controller's usefulness is decreased quite a bit.
I might be open to switching to an alternate input device, but only if I'll be able to use it with my other devices (PDA, cell phone, etc.)
Also, I fear my vi productivity will decrease dramatically with this device...
.. but I'm still waiting for this thing to come out: http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
That thing looks like a beast.
This is Offtopic, but maybe someone here would know...
I've been looking to get a chord keyset similar to the 5-key style that Engelbart created. Picture. I vaguely remember seeing one or two products when i looked a few months back, but nowhere could i find a purchase link.
I guess the question is: does anyone know where i could buy a chord keyset? Maybe some uber-nerdy slashdotter has one laying around i can buy?
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Even from a person who has taught himself how to use dvorak ... that looks like a nightmare.
Can a user remap these buttons in the same way one can remap a standard keyboard to Dvorak?
I had to learn the Handeykey Twiddler for my foray into the world of wearable computing and it was a PITA to learn. But it at least let me do it one handed and at a somewhat decent rate. This thing looks really awkward to use no matter what you do.
None of these alternative keybards have any real benefits. The twiddler was close as you could type while walking down the street or listening during a class without getting everyone's attention. This thing will get professors glaring at you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The trackball problem [I had] may not affect all users
I think it just did.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
Chording keyboards hae been since the invention of the stenotype machine in the late 1800s, enabling those willing to master what the Ars Technica article calls a "steep learning curve" to attain speeds of 225 wpm or about three times the speed of a comparably skilled typist.
They were an integral part of Engelbart's conception--the mouse was intended for use with a five-key chording keyboard.
There is nothing about them that is very difficult or expensive to manufacture. (In fact, common sense says that all things being equal a device with a dozen or so buttons ought to cost less than one with a hundred).
This one must be about the tenth that's made it to the point of being manufactured and sold to the general PC-using public, several marketed at the height of concern about RSI with reasonable evidence that they would be less stressful to use than conventional keyboards.
None of 'em have ever come close to catching on.
Chalk up chording keyboards with leap-week calendars or decimal time or the Single Tax. Ain't gonna happen.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This just in: The AG-5 is the 'keyboard' of choice for robots, androids, and borg the world over!
what do you do if you just need to type with one hand?? heh
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
I am not sure if the learning curve would be all that bad. Notice that it is set up to utilize the "home row" style of typing on a QWERTY keyboard. I think that its actually pretty cool and would definitely cut down on the carpal tunnel.
- Andrew
I meta-moderate because I care.
Using the headtracking on my Z800 to full effect has been a challenge, since I have been largely stuck using the keyboard for FPS gaming. But this thing could really give me some extra freedom of movement. Just need a long enough USB cable and I should be able to manage the cables well enough to do a few 360 degree turns without getting too tangled.
I tried a wireless programmable controller, but the batteries didn't last very long and their seemed to be some latency. This thing should provide all the keyboard commands you could ever need.
Stop Propogating Myths
I've been keeping an eye on these guys for a quite a while now. My wife ordered me one for my birthday, and it arrives today! Did we time this right or what?
Good god, my wrists shattered just looking at that thing.
There's a need for some kind of new input device, but I dont think this is it.
Read the first article again. They said it was invented to reduce mechanical failure (no word about typing speed), which is exactly what that article states it was for.
If you read any of the articles that you linked to you would see that indeed QWERTY was created to stop mechanical failures. What the articles that you link are about is the suposed superiorty of Dvorak. Nobody is questioning the validity that QWERTY was made to prevent mechanical interlocks.
I got one of these controllers. I have played with it a little its definately only for those that can seriously learn to touch type. Since many of the buttons are not at all in sight you really have to learn the keyboard. Over all its comfortable, but I feel that more than one size would have been better. The shipping model is more suitable for the average hand. A smaller hand could problay learn to work with it. My medium-large hands are pretty much at the limit of comfortable use. If you have large hands the buttons are not going to be anyplace near your finger tips.
The keyboard makes extensive use of shift buttons to accomplish things. Get used to some finger acrobatics. I still have not quite got the hang of Control-Alt-Delete on this thing.
The Built in Mouse....
Personally this is the one true downfall in my opinion. The roller ball is WAY to small, and its far far far to slow it takes me far far to many rolls over the ball to get the mouse around even a 1024/768 acreen, never mind the 1280/1024 I typically run at. The performance in games (The reason I originally thought this might be a useful product) is basically worthless at this point. I went so far as to hack the registry to increase the mouse responsiveness to the maximum allowable, a setting you can't even do in the crontrol panel applet. The mouse still isn't acceptably responsive. In fact it seemed barley changed on the AG-5 despite the fact that another mouse on the same machine now zips the cursor accross the machine so fast you have to take a second after the movement to find it again.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
From the website http://www.alphagrips.com/store/shopping.html
"The AlphaGrip may not be ergonomic. The company has not conducted the requisite studies to make that determination."
For some reason it seems to me that using a device other than microphone is too much... why work so hard to go from one handheld device to another? I'm not advocating for brain implants (the ultimate in hands free computing), but voice control is a nice medium. Hands free + surgery free ;) Complex key combos can be shortened to a word or two... no more RSI... plus it frees up both hands............
Chaos is Divine *
...for an alternative keyboard that rivals the now-deceased TouchStream. This one doesn't look like it'll do the job, although it does at least combine keyboard and mouse...
(If you've never used integrated keyboard/mouse input, you're missing out. Text editing, in particular, benefits hugely. Some things are far easier to do with the mouse, but power users stick to the keyboard to avoid the switch time.)
The problem with all of these chorded keyboard replacements - including this one - is that they are mostly useless for anyone with fewer than five working fingers [*] on each hand, either accidentally or from birth. And a person with the normal allocation of fingers who temporarily loses use of one, due to an injury for example, would have to revert to the standard keyboard which, happily, is still entirely functional - albeit slower. I would be very interested to see more designs of alternative input devices that can accommodate temporary and permanent disabilities.
[*] Ignoring the thumb-vs-finger debate.
So seconded!
I'm not being sarcastic here -- I'm honestly not sure what group of users is being targetted here. It seems that the only people who might find this useful are people who don't have a flat surface in front of them to rest a keyboard on. That might be laptop users, but if there's nowhere to rest the laptop, you can't use it anyway -- and while it can be argued that typing on the laptop while it's sitting on your lap is uncomfortable, I'm not sure balancing the laptop using only your knees while holding this thing over it is going to be any better. So, if not laptop users, then PDA users -- except this thing is larger than most of the PDAs commonly in use. Tablet users walking around the shop floor? If you're using both hands to hold the controller, what's holding up the tablet?
This is an honest question: who is this thing for?
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oops i dropped my controller.
The biggest problem w/ chordal input or any non-standard input device is that it's non-standard. The operating system and applications will not be designed with that input device in mind. They won't be widely available.
Chordal input could be popularized by someone who builds both the input device and the OS & application stack. The only environments that I think could... uh... incubate such a snowball would be a console or cell phone company. Not Windows or Mac OS computers.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I really wish that somebody would make a console controller similar to the Xbox 360 controller, with the right analog stick replaced by a trackball. Using an analog stick for moving a pointer or your player's view in a first-person shooter is just terrible. Having a trackball would be much better for such actions. Also, with such a change, the controller would have 3 direction controls: D-pad, analog stick, and trackball. Each have proven themselves to be useful for certain game tasks, so why not make them all available at the same time?
But we already have a solution: the Nintendo Revolution!
The idea is simple: you move the mouse cursor through tilting the device. It requires no extra buttons and is perfectly natural and intuitive, since you're already holding the thing in the air. Basically, it would be a pointing device that you could really point with. Finally, you could mouse around without interrupting your typing! There would be all sorts of ways the device could detect its orientation. I'm not sure which method will be best, though the Nintendo Revolution controller will probably provide us with good clues. So why not build the innards of the Revolution controller inside of this keyboard? Apart from being useful for living room applications, it would just be awesome for games! Consider for example a game like GTA where you turn the car's steering wheel by tilting the controller!
If these guys don't build that in, I hope someone else does. Hell, I'd pay $200 for a wireless tilt-driven one of these (that fits large hands).
Actually this has been done before nintendo. It's called the gryo mouse. http://www.gyration.com/en-US
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Oh, sure, give it a USB plug and let it run off computer power if you need to, but with bluetooth out there, why in the world would you make a handheld device in a corded-only model?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Notice that in the demonstration video on the product website, the guy demonstrating how easy it is to use made simple typing errors...
Notice that most input devices you buy these days comes with a little leaflet on ergonomics that nobody reads. Why do they bother? Because when you get RSI and sue them, they can say, "Hey, did you read the leaflet?"
I like the look of the device, at least its not beige or some other lame color. Glossy black is cool. It sounds like you can actually type on it at a decent rate of speed, which is also good. Too bad the mouse isn't so great on it, but I'm sure they'll work that out in a generation or two. Hope they survive that long! I'd like to see a couple of developments with this:
- A version with more analog axes than just the mouse. The ultimate to me would be if they could put a spaceball type controller on there in addition to the mouse; then you could do CAD with it. And that would be awesome.
- A laptop which has no regular keyboard, just this device. The monitor part would be kind of like a tablet PC, maybe with a fold out stand to keep it upright.
Smaller than an X-box controller. No wireless. Lame.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
How are the buttons themselves? Are they noisy/clicky? Are they easy to press, and do they feel responsive?