SPCR

Radeonman wrote:A trip to fry's this past weekend and a good "feeling" (good thing they're floor samples, eh?) of all the keyboards they had there, this one was the winner:

http://www.gyration.com/keyboard.htm

They had it for $150. There's even a fun video at their website.

I got a lot of extra foam around, I may try and stuff some into my mouse this weekend and see if that makes a difference.

I tried on of those Gyration keyboards at my Fry's and they feel and sound almost identical to the Viewsonic KU-201 that you can get from Newegg for $30. The Viewsonic isn't wireless though.

I got one of those Gyration keyboard & mouse sets for my dad for Christmas. They're great! My brother took the keyboard all the way across the house to the kitchen and it still worked great through several walls. The keyboard is a laptop style, so if you are bugged by the low action of laptop keyboards then you won't be pleased. Because of the unique gyroscope/optical mouse, I think this would be the ideal keyboard and mouse combo for use in a home theater PC environment.

Has anyone tried the keytronic lt-designer keyboard? It is advertised as being silent, and keytronic keyboards generally have a very good feeling for typing.

http://www.keytronic.com/home/products/ ... signer.htm

Since we're on the topic of bizarre keyboards and mice, I'll mention the iGesture Pad. I got mine a week ago and am very happy with it. At first glance, it looks like a touchpad. However, touchpads only track on finger or the central point of multiple fingers, while the iGesture tracks each finger individually anywhere on the surface. Not only does it control cursor movement, but there are hundreds of little hand gestures you can do to accomplish common tasks in Windows or whatever OS you use. For instance, rotating your thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers in a clockwise motion will close a file as if you had pressed the X. Rotating them counterclockwise brings up the open dialog box. You can point and click with any two adjacent fingers, and touching with any 3 adjacent fingers is the same as a double-click.

Despite the complex descriptions of some of the gestures, they're really quite easy to learn. I had most of them memorized through simple use within the first day. Furthermore, there's a gesture editor (currently in beta) that you can download and use to setup macros and other commands for any finger movement available. Also, since the surface requires virtually no pressure for a command to register, it is completely silent, and much easier on your fingers and wrist than a mouse.

Auric wrote:Since we're on the topic of bizarre keyboards and mice, I'll mention the iGesture Pad.

Thanks for the link. If I had a zillion samoullians, I'd run out and get me one of their keyboards (see for a rather complete description, including their full range of gesture inputs). I really don't like the switching from key to mouse, but (especially for Web) there are not consistant keyboard shortcuts across apps/sites. Plus graphics work is rather a challenge with just keys. BUT, $340 is a bit steep for an unproven lark.

Hmmm, if it were wireless, though....


[[ Edited to rectify an awkward URL link ]]

There's actually a review of the pad on Wired News, though I'm too lazy to dig up the link right now. From what I've heard from other users, the pad is the best use of the MultiTouch technology. While the keyboard is very ergonomically pleasing and easy to use, you still can't get the same data entry rate you can with a normal keyboard. The iGesture, on the other hand (and I know this from personal experience), is a lot faster than using a mouse. Compared to most bizarre forms of computer input, all of their products are quite cheap.

I'll have to chime in on the Apple Pro Keyboard. Quietest one I've used yet aside from my roll up indestructable one. I have no idea on the Dell keyboards though. Those might be quieter than the Apple one.

I'll give props to the Gyration set though. I took a chance and played with a display model at a local store (of course half the keys were missing), but the one I got is working very well. There was a few hours where the 'd' key got stuck in the lower posistion for awhile a few days ago. It could've been the heat or the humidity or something. But its working fine a few hours later. And the range. For a wireless set, I was getting it to work from the kitchen a floor down and through a ton of walls. That beats anything my logitech cordless desktop optical had to offer - quiet, small, fast and good range for only a few $$ more.

[[ resurrecting an old thread ]]

Based on Auric's comments plus a little more digging, I order Fingerworks' iGesture NumPad (i.e., their gesture-based touch pad with numeric and cursor keys). I've used it for about a week now.

I am generally very impressed and would recommend it highly. It is, of course, silent. I have a bit of RSI (repetitive stress injury) sustained a few years ago while trying to write my dissertation, and which recurrs now with extensive mouse use. I've tried a number of mouse-thingies (trackballs, regaulr, contoured, wireless, etc.) but always found them problematic for extended use. So far, the iGesture pad has been very comfortable. Some of the gestures are a bit fiddly for me and there are is at least one I wish were there (i.e., close window). However, their gesture editor appears to provide the additional functionality, and I'm easily learning their canned gestures.

I don't think I'd get their keyboard, but am very pleased with the pad. It's about US$189, so not cheap; however, saving just one trip to the doctor's office could pay for the difference. Plus, there is no price for a pleasurable user interface. As I said in an audiophile thread here, spend money at stages of energy transduction (e.g., from muscle to electronic, from electronic to visual, etc.).

Boy, you just can't keep this thread from bubbling back up to the top occaisionally.

I have some exciting "quiet keyboard" news to add to this thread. My long search for a quiet keyboard is finally over. About a month ago I got one of these. It's got short-travel laptop style keys with a light touch and is the quietest desktop keyboard I've ever used. The keys are positioned in the standard layout with the fullsize backspace key and the Ins, del, home, end, pageup, pagedown keys in the correct place. It's also a beautiful metallic silver with black keys. The only downside (to me at least) is that it's USB. Otherwise it's perfect, everything I've always wanted in a keyboard but have never found.

It's actually the exact same keyboard as the Macally Icekey Mac keyboard but it has Windows keys in the appropriate places.


Notice that right now the silver+black version of this is sold out but they do have the white version in stock. Another source for the white version is Qtek.

Radeonman wrote:Yay, the silver and black version will match my trackball! Now I just need a silver and black LCD. Maybe Ralf will find me a low response time, thin bezeled, high image quality, and inexpensive one of those, too

I sure like my Dell 1900FP (Samsung 191T). It's the single most satisfying computer hardware purchase I've ever made. It fits all your requirements except it's marginal on the response time (I think 25ms is quoted) for the die-hard gamers. I'm not a super hard-core gamer but I only play FPSes and very rarely notice any ghosting. As always, YMMV!

Radeonman wrote:Mm. That does look pretty. Now I just need one that's 16ms (that's my working number). How much that one cost?

Dude, go search www.dell.com

or let me do it for you $750 wo/ discounts/coupons/etc

I don't know about Radeonman, but that doesn't fall under "inexpensive" in my book. But, man, what a beautiful monitor!

I've seen it for less. Check the discount / coupons web sites. I usually visit Ben's Bargains and notice that Dell once in a while will have some insane deals. Once it was a server system with 3.2 GHz P4 for less than the retail price of the CPU. That might be a mistake coz they yanked it the next day.

lenny wrote:I don't know about Radeonman, but that doesn't fall under "inexpensive" in my book. But, man, what a beautiful monitor!

I've seen it for less. Check the discount / coupons web sites. I usually visit Ben's Bargains and notice that Dell once in a while will have some insane deals. Once it was a server system with 3.2 GHz P4 for less than the retail price of the CPU. That might be a mistake coz they yanked it the next day.

Inexpensive is relative, I guess.

The 1900FP/191T's are real inexpensive now as compared to when I bought mine about 15 months ago. I paid $1100 for mine and that was a deal using a 20% off Dell coupon + $100 off coupon + free 2-day shipping. They were selling for $1500 when they first came out. I've seen them as cheap as $625 over tha last few months.

Radeonman wrote:In my ever-growing effort to be like Ralf, I've ordered one of his keyboards.

Did you order the silver and black one? Where'd you get it from? The place where I got mine is out of stock. I just called Friday looking for another and they said this is their biggest selling product and they don't expect any more stock for a while.

What about this one?

Looks pretty good, plus they say it has laptop-type keys, a numpad, and a big backspace

miker wrote:What about this one?

Looks pretty good, plus they say it has laptop-type keys, a numpad, and a big backspace

That's the same keyboard as the Viewsonic 201 but the case is made out of aluminum.

I had the Viewsonic 201 and it's keypress feel is excellent but all the special keys (Ins, Del, Home, End, PgUp, PgDown, arrows, PrtScr, etc) are crammed over against the right side of the main key section, just like on a laptop keyboard.

I really liked it for it's key feel but I just couldn't live with the non-standard key location so I sold it.

Ralf Hutter wrote:I had the Viewsonic 201...

Which I now have I agree, the feel is nice. And it looks cool too. But the non-standard key placement is a bit anoying. I still like it. Thanks again Ralf!

Ralf Hutter wrote:Inexpensive is relative, I guess.

If you have rich relatives it's inexpensive *cough* sorry, bad pun.

Ralf Hutter wrote:I've seen them as cheap as $625 over tha last few months.

Just saw it today at Dell Business, $599 but have to add tax to that. Oh so tempted... if only I could have stacked the 10% off coupon I received in their catalog. I just bought the NEC 170B2T couple of weeks back. $350 for a 17" LCD with DVI connector was a good price, I thought, until I discovered that it didn't come with a DVI cable. Oh well, the analog input was very good too (and, yes, it does come with a VGA cable).

(Dragging this thread back on-topic)

I actually came to this thread looking for a recommendation for a quiet mouse. My wife frequently uses the computer in the same room that the younger kid naps in, and the clicking will sometimes wake her up. Keyboards are not quite so bad. She uses the Microsoft Natural something or other, and you can actually train yourself to type more quietly, if the alternative is a screaming kid in your hands I think I'll try the blue tack damping trick on one of the mouse this weekend. I've already bought a replacement so that she won't be too upset at finding it sitting on the dining table all gutted

This thread won't die!

I was looking at the IBM Keyboards. They claim to be very quiet but.. of course, I want to hear what you guys think. Do any of you have one of these IBM keyboards? They claim "Reduced keystroke noise."

I currently use (at work) a Dell QuietKey. It almost reminds me of the Vantec "Stealth" fans marketing tactic.

IBM Active Response Keyboard (Stealth) @ amazon.com.

My laptop has what i thought was fairly quiet keyboard. Though the keys still rattle a bit. The touch pad though is great, no clicking or scraping on the desktop. I had an old keyboard back in the days of 386s which actually clicked! it was horrible. Then i got a honeywell spacemate which i still use and is good enough for me. I would like soemthing like the "PSK-5000" though. i wonder if there is a PS/2 version?


Anyway, I just wanted to say that I don't think keyboards have to make noise. Most of the feed back you get about whether you are pushing hard enough for it to register cames from the "feel" as the key gives past the critical part. For example on my laptop there is a certain amount of resistance as you start to push a key in, then as you push harder it gives and you can push it down nearly all the way without much extra effort. Its this feeling that i think is important. Unfortuately the keys rattle a bit as my finger strike them. And now i'm noticing it DAMN!