Fri, 23 Sep 2005
Buying a new keyboard
For an unspecified reason, I needed to buy a new keyboard(*). This task has proved to be more difficult than I expected. The problem was that I had some specific (albeit not unusual) requirements:
- USB interface. This is the secondary keyboard in a dual-head X11 setup, USB is a requirement here.
- Wide backspace key.
- No extra "multimedia" keys or any such crap.
- Standard-length shift keys. I wonder why some keyboards have to have two backslash keys at a cost of shortened left shift key.
Pretty simple, isn't it? Quite the contrary. I have browsed few e-shops, but only Orange & Green had the keyboard which met my requirements:
However, they did not have it in their shop in Brno. I have visited few nearby shops, but no luck. In one of them they even had a keyboard with the same picture as the above one printed on the packaging, but there was a different keyboard inside. I suspect that the packaging with that picture is a generic packaging used for various keyboards. So I doubt even O&G would give me exactly this keyboard when I ordered it from their e-shop.
In the end I bought a keyboard at Autocont - they have USB keyboard with long backspace, but with two backslash keys and shortened left shift key. It is sad that all shops are filled with crappy keyboards with unneeded bells and whistles, but they cannot offer a simple USB keyboard with long shift keys and long backspace key.
(*) Did you know that printed circuits inside the keyboard are made of a water-soluble conductor :-)?