From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Oct 5 14:57:15 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-27-149-77.mmcable.com [24.27.149.77]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9AE8937B503 for ; Thu, 5 Oct 2000 14:57:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 5459 invoked by uid 100); 5 Oct 2000 21:57:05 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14812.63793.816138.593388@guru.mired.org> Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 16:57:05 -0500 (CDT) To: Manuel Enrique Garcia Cuesta Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: OT: Keyboard feel (was: internet keyboards) In-Reply-To: <20001005214142.A329@ilex.kicelo.org> References: <84610204@toto.iv> <14811.59658.911452.775656@guru.mired.org> <20001005214142.A329@ilex.kicelo.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Manuel Enrique Garcia Cuesta writes: > === Mike Meyer escribia > (Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 09:35:54PM -0500): > > Manuel Enrique Garcia Cuesta writes: > > > I was rather thinking of how dull and uncomfortable PC keyboards > > > "feel" nowadays, ... > > I thimk that's a cost thing. The current cheap technology for > > keyboards just results in mushy keyboards. They also tend not to deal > > with n-key rollover very well. I understand you can still get the > > older tech keyboars new, but the price has reason from the $100 range > > to over $200/keyboard. Last time I bought a keyboard, I chose a > > Logitech Deluxe 104, and picked up a no-name clone for $3 as a > > spare. It's hard to justify $200 for keyboard under those conditions. > I suppose it depends on what you use your keyboard for, > but I don't think I would shell that much out for a keyboard, > either. Pardon me while I rant on :) , but the spree of > a-mouse-is-all-you-need mottoes seems to have damaged a > standard of quality that used to be much higher, even for > rubber dome keyboards. After all, who is going to manufacture > a decent keyboard for the (seemingly ) few people who really > use it ? And, I suppose, those who do make them have to > charge accordingly so to make up for the lack of demand. That may well be why people put up with it. But I think it's got more to do with clone makers putting the cheapest keyboard (modem/etc.) on the things they can - so the demand for those goes up, meaning the price for one aftermarket is still cheap compared to what the older keyboards were. Which drives the price of those up. > While we are at it, would you oblige and educate me > with the meaning of "n-key rollover" ? Rollover is the term used to describe striking more than one key at a time. It's a problem for fast typists - they're hitting the next key(s) before the keyboard registers the release of the previous ones. 2-key rollover means you can hit any arbitrary key on the keyboard, hold it down, and then hit another one and the second registers. A good keyboard will handle arbitrary mush that way. N-key rollover is handling larger numbers of keys. The cheaper one I would handle all the 2-key rollover cases, but had trouble with some 3-key ones.