Going Dutch: The Bakker Elkhuizen UltraBoard 950 Wireless... because looks aren't everything

Keyboards are essential so it's no surprise people are particular about the ones they use. And though mechanical keyboards command the majority of the mouth-foaming geek lust, there's still a home for the humble scissor-switch, as demonstrated by the delightfully functional Bakker Elkhuizen UltraBoard 950 Wireless. Functional …

[Hubert Cumberdale]

"as your mum once told me"

Channelling Charlie Brooker. Love it.

Keyboard looks good, too, although £90 seems a little on the high side for what it is. Personally, I've found that the presence of a numeric keypad can mess up my mouse arm with RSI, as it means it has to be at a weird angle. I had to have physio for shoulder pains some years ago, and the guy recommended a non-numeric-keypad keyboard such as this, combined with a trackball. Worked a treat. Since the invention of the mouse, standard keyboards are just weird, ergonomically speaking. At least for right-handers.

[hmv]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

I used to use a reconfigurable TiPro keyboard and used the number pad on the left side - it certainly makes a huge difference. These days I just avoid mousing too much and tend to swivel in the direction of the mouse when I need to use it.

[John H Woods]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Buy a separate numberpad and put it where you like

[H in The Hague]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

"... recommended a non-numeric-keypad keyboard such as this, combined with a trackball. Worked a treat."

Worked for my RSI too. But now I've replaced the trackball by a roller mouse and that works even better. The great advantage is you don't really have to move your hands to the mouse/trackball, saving strain and time. I operate the roller bar and buttons with my thumbs and that feels very natural.

https://contour-design.co.uk/products/centred-mice/

The price is a bit steep, but worth it if you spend most of the day behind a glass typewriter.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

I hadn't previously considered the numeric keypad being on the left hand side of a keyboard rather than the right. This makes quite a lot of sense for a system controlled by mouse and keyboard.

[Martin Summers]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

I got bought a Microsoft Sculpt desktop set for work to use to alleviate my RSI. I have found it amazingly good at the job. Unfortunately it is expensive and I'm going to be working for a charity soon and don't want to burden them with an occupational health request for a keyboard such as this. Does anyone know of any proven decent, reasonably priced keyboards with the same aesthetics as the Sculpt? Any help would be appreciated.

PS: Unfortunately my old work won't let me take the keyboard and mouse I've used for 3 years even though I know it will get chucked in storage and never used again. Who'd knowingly want to use a keyboard someone has used for that long anyway!

[noostroi]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 - basically the same layout as the Sculpt, but about half the price... (It's a bit older...)

[fobobob]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

I'm probably somewhat biased as I never got to use a new one, but at a previous job, those were the standard deployment. Unfortunately, it seemed that about 3/4 of them had 'sticky' keys that couldn't be depressed smoothly (key support tube binding in its channel), making it impossible to do more than 40wpm without significant error rate.

[Korev]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Unfortunately it is expensive and I'm going to be working for a charity soon and don't want to burden them with an occupational health request for a keyboard such as this.

Just because they're a charity doesn't mean they don't have to not provide "reasonable adjustments" for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Just because they're a charity doesn't mean they don't have to not provide "reasonable adjustments" for you.

True, but on the other hand it's only decent to seek a way to minimise the associated costs. Also closes the door to any accusations of using a physical need to establish some form of entitlement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Particularly when many "charities" are paying staff 6 figures and in some cases paying for flights etc for marketing droids to commute (I think cancer research was one) so no a keyboard and mouse at £90 is a drop in the ocean, particularly given the amount of tat many send out to all and sundry (pens etc)

[phuzz]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

"Unfortunately my old work won't let me take the keyboard and mouse I've used for 3 years even though I know it will get chucked in storage and never used again."

Make friends with the IT flunky in charge of chucking your keyboard, and I'm sure they'll ensure it gets chucked into a waiting bag...

[Martin Summers]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

"Make friends with the IT flunky in charge of chucking your keyboard, and I'm sure they'll ensure it gets chucked into a waiting bag..."

Ha, that'd certainly be an idea if we weren't a really small team, as in 4 of us now soon to be 2 as we leave the sinking ship!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Perixx Periduo.

[ICL1900-G3]

Perixx

Perixx make lovely keyboards, I'm surprised they're not better known.

[Stoneshop]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Unfortunately my old work won't let me take the keyboard and mouse I've used for 3 years even though I know it will get chucked in storage and never used again.

I tend to bring my own keyboard[0] and trackball[1], clearly different from whatever crap the standard stuff is. As far as I know the current bunch don't inventory keyboards and mice anyway, and people have ASKED me to take stuff out the door and 'dispose' of it when it didn't fit one of their disposal processes. Including a 3kVA UPS and a bunch of defective 40" display monitors[2], so hardly inconspicuously baggable.

[0] Cherry 3000

[1] Logitech Trackman Marble FX

[2] all but one repaired by replacing a few known-marginal components

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Unfortunately it is expensive and I'm going to be working for a charity soon and don't want to burden them with an occupational health request for a keyboard such as this.

Don't be concerned - most "charities" exist only to support the people that work for them - just look at the remuneration packages for their board members! They'll be fine with any request for expensive gear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

and if they aren't.....well that says a LOT about their views on staff and their "core" values....i.e. cancer research being dragged kicking and screaming into allowing anyone other than women into their "race for life" despite many other nations allowing anyone to run for years

[DenonDJ DN-2500F]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Yup - once worked for a horse welfare charity that keep some poor knackered beasts ( one blind, others were in terrible health as they had been rescued from bad treatment) as they knew they got lots of money for looking after them. Going back 7-8 years, i got told to sort the blackberrys out (when the whole blackberry network was down, iphones were of course bought for the execs. An then expensive 40" TV was in the reception area even though the site wasnt open to the pubic , only to a select number of visitors.

Provided training and employment for loads of folks in numerous locations in the UK. The hundreds of horses seemed to be an aside.

[Muscleguy]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Pressups are very good for such shoulder issues. I have suffered from similar myself and fixed it with pressups. I do them very regularly to avoid a repeat. I have a third party bluetooth keypad for this Mac Book Pro. It also does both Mac and PC (via a slider switch underneath). If I use it a lot I can have issues if I'm not careful.

I had to have a joint fused in each hand and am vulnerable to a kind of RSI. I find when typing or using the keyboard if I DON'T rest my hands it is MUCH better. So lift your hands up. Also when using the trackpad/ball that enables you to move your whole arm and keep your wrists still.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Press ups are very good for such shoulder issues.

OK, that I have to try. Thanks for the tip.

[Danny 5]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

It's quite typical for their stuff. It's all pretty good and functional, but definitely on the pricey side. I have one of their aluminium laptop stands and I believe they're over 100 quid as well. That's just a stand, no connectors or anything, just a foldable flip stand. Sure, they're pretty stylish, they look very sleek and work well, but 100 quid for a laptop stand? Seems a bit excessive to me.

My boss paid for mine, mind you!

[Natalie Gritpants Jr]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

Move the mouse to the left hand side. Take a bit of getting used to but it's much cheaper than a physio.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

I'm a little bit ambidextrous, I always use the mouse in my left hand.

Have had some issues recently with the finger, alas but nothing to make me want or comfortably able to swap hands.

[Alistair]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

upvoted for trackball use. Need more trackball users.

[gurugeorge]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

I haven’t used a keyboard since 2012 when I discovered Siri

[Stubbly Dude]

Re: "as your mum once told me"

I switched to using a mouse with my left hand - saved a fortune!

[Benchops]

To my mind

it looks spot on! Agree £90 is too steep though. I can see from their website that there IS a UK layout, but the dealbreaker would be whether the return key is two-row L-shaped or not! I like a return key I can't miss. Can't find pics of the UK Layout.

...

[Edit]

Found one: https://keyboardco.com/keyboard/ultraboard-950-compact-multi-pair-bluetooth-keyboard.asp

It would seem the answer is "no".

[Freddellmeister]

Am I having a flu or is there something weird about "A comfortable, pleasant non-mechanical keyboard"?

[dajames]

Not cheap

Ninety of your Earth pounds for a scissor-switch keyboard seems exorbitant when you can get a decent keyboard with real mechanical switches for a little less, or a really good one (yea! even one with those Cherry Blue switches mocked for their delightful clickiness in the article) for only a third more.

I'd have expected this to be in the £25 to £50 range.

[imanidiot]

Re: Not cheap

Cherry blue switches are delightful to type on, but a nightmare for all those around you trying to focus on their own work if you're stuck in an open plan office

I've gone for the Cherry Browns (just about clicky enough for my taste) for my home setup where I very rarely bother anyone. At work I'm stuck with a rubber dome keyboard with a rather disappointing feedback.

[Vometia Munro]

Re: Not cheap

Admittedly it's a really subjective issue so me saying I'm a fan of neither MX Blues nor Browns isn't at all relevant, but speaking as someone who's been a long-time fangirl of the clattery Model M (the clatter in question being the reason for looking for alternatives... not so much for the sake of cow-orkers but waking up my other half during my random hours gaming sessions) I was surprised to find myself quite at home with an MX Red based keyboard. It's a Vortex, so on the plus side it's small and very solidly made; on the minus, the keycaps are a notoriously tight fit and I managed to yank the stem out with one of them. Fortunately brute force saved the day but I'd recommend a bit more care and attention than I managed!

[Imhotep]

Re: Not cheap

You should have heard the racket from a room full of typewriters when the steno pool was a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not cheap

While we are on Yorkshireman territory, you should have heard the racket from a room full of tape punches when human input and verification was a thing.

Only I couldn't, because everybody in there had to wear ear defenders, including me when I went in to collect the tapes.

[Gene Cash]

Re: Not cheap

You could tell the old keypunch room at my Uni because of the thick stand-off acoustic tiles on the ceiling and all the walls.

[BebopWeBop]

Re: Not cheap

Those were the days. As a PhD student, and skint, I rescued an old teletype from a skip (it took three of us plus two skateboards underneath to get it the two miles home). It then served as a local printer for the house) with the proviso that it could only be run when (a) everyone was swigging beer in the kitchen or (b) everyone else was out.

[Luiz Abdala]

Re: Not cheap - skateboards!

I would love to see someone log 2 skateboards as "transport equipment" or something in an invoice, true BOFH style.

I would also find it very strange - then find it makes total sense - to have a couple skateboards in a server room.

And "use a manual scooter as a pallet jack" could be added to the list.

But back on topic... the noisiest thing I ever witnessed are dot-printers. They are not the loudest, but their pitch is the most irritating thing, like a couple hundred of Banshees stubbing their toes and cursing their fate at the same time.

'Ye olde' Remington typewriters have that nice mechanical 'click-clack' behind the sharp noise of the hammer on the hard rubber, which makes them almost pleasant, the same feature being similar to mechanical keyboards, and shotguns being cocked.

But dot-printers, by Geezus on the Holy Supper...

[Stoneshop]

Re: Not cheap

I once had a need to print nearly 30000 barcode stickers, back in the days when printshops didn't cater to this type of jobs if they even were around, laser printers were Large && Expensive and were either still Expensive second-hand, or broken (and still Large in either case), and inkjets had just come into being and were not at all destined for home use yet. So my NEC P7 it was, and pinfeed sticker stock.

After a few short test runs I was convinced it would do the job without further supervision, loaded the first box of stickers and a fresh ink ribbon, and went out. After what I had calculated to be the earliest time to return home I came back, found 7500 correctly printed stickers, fed the strip back in (two columns stock, but the software could manage only one), continued the job at 7501 and went out again. Repeat at 15k, with a fresh ribbon, and 22k5.

At University I found myself in possession of some HP line printer, but we never managed to get the (parallel, differential signalling) interface converted to something our Beebs and Apples could drive. So the bigger noise problem was averted; it was already noticeable when idling.

(icon: hearing protectors)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not cheap

IIRC we were able to connect an HP9825 to an HP line printer at a horrifying cost, but there was a bug between HP BASIC and the line feed that we never quite sorted out, and an utter lack of interest from HP in fixing it.

We had it installed in our lab which was warehouse sized (owing to the substantial piece of military hardware we were working on), and so the noise wasn't really an issue.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Re: Not cheap

Cherry blue switches are delightful to type on, but a nightmare for all those around you trying to focus on their own work if you're stuck in an open plan office.

Well fuck you. Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOqhb5ZrcQg

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ65Xj_ZUAs)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-P7yVqJ9Wk)

[khjohansen]

Re: Not cheap

Pffftt ..!

https://youtu.be/jinGW7ZDGPM?t=77

[Simon Harris]

I get an early 1980s home-computer vibe from the picture.

Sort of what an Oric 1 might have looked like if it had an Apple IIc keyboard.

[MyffyW]

Re: I get an early 1980s home-computer vibe from the picture.

I thought this was a retro computing article. Instead it looks to be far too relevant to my day job so I'm going back to ...... zzzz

[Andy The Hat]

Re: I get an early 1980s home-computer vibe from the picture.

Thanks. Some people can make you feel old so easily!

[Nick Ryan]

Re: I get an early 1980s home-computer vibe from the picture.

I almost feel like the old arguments... Everybody laughing at the poor kid who's (PHB) dad bought something like an Oric because of they were given some branded golf balls. The Commodore and Spectrum owners laughing at the toff kidd who had a BBC Micro but when they were weren't doing that were having a go at each other...

I think that roughly sums up 1980s computing in the UK.

[Vometia Munro]

Re: I get an early 1980s home-computer vibe from the picture.

And then there was the random nerd who was blinded by an interest in computing so ended up with a Dragon and spent her subsequently disaffected youth bemoaning the lack of decent sound of graphics, and that none of those interesting computing things could be done using cassette tape anyway.

[GruntyMcPugh]

Re: I get an early 1980s home-computer vibe from the picture.

@Simon Harris: "Home computer vibe"

Gotta admit, from the pic, I was expecting a PC in a keyboard that casts to the Telly type of device, not just a keyboard. I mean 'Ultraboard 950 Wireless'... sets an expectation as well.

Meanwhile, I very nearly had an Oric 1 back in the day,.... ZAP!

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

What is this obsession with Bluetooth keyboards? I have a KVM on my desk so a USB version would be exactly what I'm looking for.

[Archivist]

Here you go

There's a wired version here:

https://www.bakkerelkhuizen.co.uk/ergonomic-keyboards/ultraboard-950/

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: Here you go

Well it looks like my pocket might be £90 lighter some time very soon then. Thanks!

(Ah rats, they don't do a version with a Portuguese layout... sob...)

[Vometia Munro]

Re: Here you go

Absent-mindedly reading that URL in my not even half-awake state I thought I was seeing "Bakelite". That's what we need. Bakelite keyboards.

[Long John Brass]

That's what we need. Bakelite keyboards

Only if it comes with a slightly chintzy gold & silver cloth speaker grill :)

[AndyMulhearn]

Re: That's what we need. Bakelite keyboards

And with frequencies marked for Hilversum and The Light Progamme.

Shit, remembering that makes me feel old.

[Stoneshop]

What is this obsession with Bluetooth keyboards?

I have this all-in-1 hovering over my workbench on an articulated monitor arm, with a wireless keyboard, mouse and trackball as HIDs. It's there mainly for displaying a datasheet, schematic, or build instructions, and the odd modification to source code.

Those peripherals can be nicely put aside when not needed without getting tangled up in the often gargantuan mess of wires that a work in progress tends to invite. Also Bluetooth because that is already present on the workstation and a few of the Pi's, and quickly added to the others.

[MachDiamond]

With bluetooth, you can use the keyboard with a tablet. I spent some time as a photojournalist and lugged around a 101 keyboard to plug into my laptop so I could type faster and more accurately.

Having a good quality keyboard that you can use on all of your devices is a good thing. I would like the option of turning off the bluetooth and using USB when security or interference is an issue.

[highdiver_2000]

Mapped Home key!

Hi,

Remapped or non dedicated Home End, Page UP and Down is big no no for me.

[NogginTheNog]

Re: Mapped Home key!

Agreed: working on the company laptop keyboard and having to press 'Fn' every time I want one of those (ie. frequently!) is a right pita!

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Mapped Home key!

Yes. Especially for a task like clear-to-EOL, where you have to do Shift-Fn-Right and hope you haven't hit Ctrl or something by mistake.

My old Dell Lassitude has Home and End stuck up next to the function keys, for some reason, but at least it has them, and Page Up / Page Down. My newer Dell Derision has those stupid overloaded cursor keys, and I loathe them. (But at least it's in keeping with Dell's tradition of horrible design errors, something they've managed to achieve with every single one of the Dell machines my employer has ever saddled me with.)

[H in The Hague]

Re: Mapped Home key!

"Remapped or non dedicated Home End, Page UP and Down is big no no for me."

Me too. Though they have one that might suit:

https://www.bakkerelkhuizen.com/ergonomic-keyboards/q-board-usbps2/

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Mapped Home key!

I couldn't say, since images don't appear unless you enable scripting, and I'm not going to do that for some keyboard hawker.

[Muscleguy]

ID leaking

So, we know you are not very tall because you can comfortably use a dining table as a standing desk. Mine is an old Ikea shelving unit with the top shelf moved down a few notches. It's significantly higher than the dining table. But then when I made the workbench for my home woodworking shop I stood at a comfortable height wielding a plane (metal mechanical wood smoothing variety) and got a daughter to measure from the ground to plane sole. It is sized for me.

[Stoneshop]

Re: ID leaking

and got a daughter to measure from the ground to plane sole.

That's a seriously odd, cumbersome and time-consuming method, and not very amenable to repeatable measurements in the long run.

[imanidiot]

Re: ID leaking

For deciding where the comfortable height of a workbench is, it does't really need to that accurate or repeatable. You wouldn't really notice too much if a workbench is at 105 or 107 cm height, but you definitely will if you have to work on something 90cm height when you're over 1.80 m tall

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: ID leaking

Well, it's repeatable if you only use a SI standard daughter.

[karlkarl]

Got excited but then realised it wasn't wireless; it was sodding Bluetooth!

Ugh, Bluetooth sucks. I basically need to load up a GUI just to click the "pair keyboard" button with my mouse? I suppose I could plug in another usb keyboard to do the same thing with the cli.

Or... could they not just provide a wired version, IR or proper wireless so I can just not have to faff with bluetooth?

I agree wholeheartedly with OpenBSD's choice to rip out Bluetooth; the whole technology is just a pain in the butt.

[imanidiot]

I don't share your view on bluetooth. In my experience, once a device is paired it "just works". Mind, this is only if the bluetooth stack is properly integrated/programmed on the device. The cheap shit usually "just doesn't work".

[Anonymous Coward]

El Reg shitty photography

I've wanted to ask this for ages so here goes...

Why is it that The Reg publish the tiniest grainy photos of products, when a full resolution copy exists?

If you open the image in a new browser tab you get this shitty 442 x 293 image: https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/02/18/dscf0221.jpg?x=442&y=293&crop=1

If you take off the parameters, you get a 6000 x 4000px image: https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/02/18/dscf0221.jpg

I mean, you have the full res one where we can see the detail of the product (that might be useful, eh?). Why not just put a link on the smaller one to that? This is a tech website so surely you know how to make an anchor on an image? The answer to this isn't anything to do with conserving bandwidth as clicking on it would be optional... Just saying.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

Ew. Look at the unsightly hair just below the space bar...

[Come to the Dark Side]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

Not just under the space bar, the whole keyboard looks like it's covered in cat/dog hair...

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

We can but hope.

Have a user with a past history for that sort of viewing on a company issued laptop.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

"Why is it that The Reg publish the tiniest grainy photos of products, when a full resolution copy exists?"

The thread replies seem to answer that question for you.

[FlossyThePig]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

After looking at the big picture I'd like to know the difference between the Page Up/ Page Down keys and the PgUp/PgDn (+Fn) keys. Has something been lost in translation?

[doublelayer]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

I'm guessing they just enabled the function+arrow combination because some longstanding small laptop users are familiar with that layout. If the users are used to using function+up to perform a page up, they might do that by muscle memory rather than pressing the dedicated key for that even though they have it now.

[diodesign]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

"Why is it that The Reg publish the tiniest grainy photos of products, when a full resolution copy exists?"

Because we sometimes forget to link to the full-res - and forget that you can't click on the main top image to expand it.

FWIW our articles - the content written by journalists - are input and edited as raw HTML in our publishing system, which then sticks stuff like the mast-head, headline, comments link, and so on, automatically when the article is published.

The top image of articles is automatically inserted: we can control the URL of the image, and whether one appears, but it's always non-clickable. If we want to make the main image clickable, we have to manually hide it from the top and embed it lower down in the piece.

In other words: if there's no link to a larger version of an image, someone forgot to put the anchor tag in. If the top image isn't clickable, and should be, someone forgot to move it down into the article.

Drop us an email to [e-mail] if you think we've screwed up so we can fix it immediately.

I've moved the top image down into the article and made it clickable.

C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

@diodesign thanks, I appreciate this.

I really think it's useful especially for hardware reviews to be able to see details of the products. Cheers.

[dajames]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

FWIW our articles - the content written by journalists - are input and edited as raw HTML

I'm not a huge fan of Markdown, but this seems just the sort of thing it was invented for.

[Marco Fontani]

Re: El Reg shitty photography

I'm not a huge fan of Markdown, but this seems just the sort of thing it was invented for.

Markdown is great if all you need is the subset of things that it makes easy - bold, italics, a simple link or a simple (already cut to size) image embed. Hell, I use it all the time in a number of places. I use it in hugo for my blog, too.

It has limitations.

An "image unit" which comprises of a centered image with an optional description, and possibly linking to a larger version... hits those limitations. I'd love to see the markdown to make that happen.

Chances are it'd either look like the HTML, or it would be so messy that the HTML version would be far more readable.

[eswan]

qwerty row offset?

Anybody notice the odd offset to the querty row? Looks like it's lined up verticaly with the zxcvb row, 'Y' being directly above 'B'. Seems like the kind of thing that would really trip me up.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: qwerty row offset?

Only if you left it on the floor...

But seriously... I'm used to using multiple different keyboards... and failing to type accurately on almost all of them other than my own. The offset doesn't look that bad and if your fingers are roughly aligned to the middle of the keys shouldn't be a problem.

[Howard Hanek]

Made in China?

Is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Made in China?

Quite likely. You’ll contract Covid-19 and suffer a prolonged, horrible end if you so much as breathe within one hundred metres of this keyboard.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Mnemonite (before and after)

https://www.419eater.com/images/akinkwu20.jpg

(or is it "after and before?" I forget)

[Sanctimonious Prick]

No More Keyboards

I remember there were a couple of years maybe, where headlines suggested keyboards were on their way out.

Honestly, at the time, I racked my brain trying to think of what could replace the keyboard. I came up with nothing.

That was then. This is now... (see what I did there?) :)

I reckon, now though, that Elon Musk, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and, who's that climate change documentary maker politician that everyone made fun of(?)... him, put them all in a room, and I'm sure they'll come up with a replacement for the keyboard. (!!!)

[MachDiamond]

Re: No More Keyboards

"put them all in a room, and I'm sure they'll come up with a replacement for the keyboard. (!!!)"

Or a book on how to pickup young girls. Julian and Ed would be examples of how to scare them off. Not that they aren't perfectly wonderful people. (no sarcasm tag, I respect both for standing up for what they feel is the right thing to do)

[Herby]

A key between Shift and 'Z'??

What are they thinking? They tried it with the VT220, and it was a massive fail. Come on guys, you don't put a key there!

FAIL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A key between Shift and 'Z'??

Pound sign (the currency symbol) on the number 3 key and hash/tilde above the Enter key? Probably not a US keyboard. And a quick image search on Google reveal that the US keyboard for the VT220 didn't have a key between Shift and Z.

[Timmy B]

Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard 5000

Just a brilliant keyboard. Does everything it needs to do. Subtle ergonomics that have stopped any RSI I had (though that was generally caused by years of fencing rather than typing). The accompanying mouse is great. Neither are tiny but they are great and last forever. This one is going on 7 years old and just as good as new. (oh - ok the print on the left Ctrl key is rubbing off). Had to replace the mouse a month or so back as the rubber on the scroll wheel wore out. £70 for the 5050 new version including a mouse.

You wait - it'll break now

And it does nothing for my terrible typing!

[Jason Hindle]

Re: Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard 5000

Quite happy with a Surface wireless keyboard (but accept I might be in a minority of one in these august nerd forums).

[the Kris]

The world we live in...

where you call a mechanical keyboard non-mechanical.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The world we live in...

I know what they mean, but the correct description would be too long and complicated. A "both the contacts are made of metal and a spring holds them apart" versus a "one of the contacts is printed on flexy plastic" keyboard.

[Anonymous Coward]

£90 seems a bit steep for what it is. 1/3 of that will get you this type; which I've been using happily for years now. It also fits in a pocket, so no need to tote a laptop bag around. For £90, I'd want my choice of mechanical keys, at least.

[Lord Elpuss]

What am I missing here? This is just another crappy no-name Chinese Bluetooth keyboard like literally tens of thousands before it, with what seems like no redeeming features whatsoever apart from a rebadge by an office supply company who's only contribution appears to be the £HOWF*CKINGMUCH?!? pricetag.

Not wishing to be overly negative El Reg, but really - why are you reviewing this?

[IGnatius T Foobar !]

Cherry Blue > everything else

there's a decent amount of audio feedback without annoying your co-workers/partners/dogs, as would otherwise be the case with a Cherry Blue-switch equipped mechanical keyboard.

Who cares about them? Cherry Blue is the highest plane to which a keyboard can ascend. Anyone who doesn't want to hear the satisfying, life-affirming click of Cherry Blue switches is free to leave the room. I do believe that if I were ever forced to use the keyboard in this article, I would have to configure the operating system to output the sound of a Cherry Blue on every keystroke.