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Two Videos of E-Lead's Noahpad in Action

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the headed-for-the-circular-file dept.

Engadget has a couple of great videos depicting the new 'Noahpad' laptop offering from E-Lead. This laptop offers a new kind of touchpad that is integrated with the keyboard. An interesting idea to be sure, but I doubt I could ever get used to typing on something this strange.

11 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. They call that a keyboard? by KublaiKhan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm fairly sure I saw that same design on a recent list of 'worst keyboards of history'--I'm getting carpal tunnel just thinking about typing on that abomination. Not to mention it's one of those flat things of the same type as your typical McDonald's cash register of late '90s vintage--and the chief difficulty of that kind of keyboard, besides the anti-ergonomic layout, was that frequently used keys would wear away, and the contact would become exposed--and shortly thereafter, break.

    The designer should be either shot, or forced to use it.

    --
    In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
    A stately pleasure dome decree
    1. Re:They call that a keyboard? by ceoyoyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      From the look of the video it was something a bit different... the trackpad appears to detect where your finger is (what letter you want to type) but to actually type it you seem to have to press the WHOLE half of the keyboard down for some reason. Watching the short bit where the guy was "typing" looked really painful. You can't type properly when the whole keyboard has to depress and then return for every keypress!

    2. Re:They call that a keyboard? by YuuShiSann · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you watch carefully, the guy using the keyboard needs to look at the keyboard while he is typing and his sleep is slow too. So I think the guy doesn't know what a typist needs. Typist needs to touch the 2nd key before the 1st is releasing. Merging all keys together will disrupt the feel for the typist. The design is good for those who type by using a single finger. That's why I think the inventor is not a good typer. It is an interesting design but without much practical usage. I feel bad that he invested his money on creating such a product.

    3. Re:They call that a keyboard? by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      that frequently used keys would wear away, and the contact would become exposed--and shortly thereafter, break

      It looks like this design is different. It looks like two gigantic "keys", that are actually touchpads with a keyboard printed on top that have a switch underneath to tell the difference between just touching it and pushing down on it.

      The keys would eventually rub off, but then you're down to a blank touchpad. Anyone know how long it takes for laptop touchpads to wear out? Most likely, the switch underneath each side would break first.

      The virtual desktop thing is what amuses me most. I remember the bad old days when XFree86 defaulted to allocating the largest screen possible whether your monitor could handle it or not, leading to endless streams of newbies on IRC asking how to turn the damn screen scrolling thing off.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  2. Add this to the Top 10 Worst Keyboards of all time by HockeyPuck · · Score: 3, Informative

    Add this one to the heap... http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/10/1316255

  3. Old skool ease of use by El+Cabri · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally, using a point-and-click interface will resemble using VI. The beard-suspender set rejoice !

  4. Harsh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    > The designer should be either shot, or forced to use it.

    That's WAY too harsh a punishment for the poor keyboard designer. I mean, all he did was design a hard-to-use keyboard, so he can't possibly deserve a punishment that awful.

    Better just to shoot the poor guy.

  5. Re:Blogtard Noise Machine by mevets · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mod -1, Investor

  6. Fractured English by Rorschach1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I love how the voiceover - done by someone who's clearly a native English speaker - sticks exactly to the fractured English script. You've got to wonder if it just wasn't part of his job to point out all of the errors, or if the non-native speaker who wrote it had too high an opinion of his own language skills to listen to him.

  7. Slow typing speed by jon3k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This would _dramatically_ decrease your typing speed. On a normal keyboard, once you depress the first key, before the key has even traveled back to its starting position you've struck the next key. This is possible because the keys aren't physically linked. The key press isn't signaled once the key has returned to it's starting position, but after it's depressed completely. For you to type any two letters on the left or right hand side you have to wait for the "key" (the whole side) to return to the starting position.

  8. They're just setting out to prove... by Chysn · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that British men sound smart regardless of the words coming out of their mouths.

    --
    --I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
    -- See?