A keyboard to love

What is it with keyboards? For a long time they were the afterthought, the rather insignificant but necessary twiffle that transformed the beige box into a machine that could actually do something. But no self-respecting geek would spend much time thinking about them, preferring to concentrate on more glamorous things like clock speed and fan size. For most first-time computer buyers, the keyboard barely gets a look-in on the specs front. I’m the exception.

My first computer was an Acorn Electron (yes, I resisted the temptations of the mass market ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 and went with my instincts instead. I think I also have a Betamax video machine somewhere if you’re interested.). With 32KB memory the Acorn packed a punch. Well, more of a firm slap, really. But what attracted me to it was the sturdiness of its keyboard. What mattered to me was the fact that it wouldn’t bend. It couldn’t be trampled into the carpet or flushed away by an older sibling. The Acorn’s keyboard was king. Come to think of it, the Acorn was the keyboard. It just happened to have a cassette player attached.

Times have changed, but my predilections haven’t. I’m still a man who likes what my computer insists on calling ”human interface devices” — the keyboard and mouse (the latter being an unheard of luxury in my Acorn days). The keyboard was still foremost in my affections until, two years ago, I encountered Microsoft’s Optical Desktop package — a cordless mouse and keyboard combo that I fell in love with. The mouse was the optical part, meaning it had no moving bits to gather fluff with as it curved gracefully across my mouse pad. I was hooked. Nothing would slow its journey through cyberspace. I loved that mouse. It didn’t have the ”back” and ”forward” buttons its predecessor the Cordless Mouse had, but it was cordless and it glowed when it moved. I started to pay more attention to my mouse, and less to my keyboard.

I was pretty oblivious to this shift in my affections and, in fairness to it, my keyboard didn’t let its feelings show. It soldiered on bravely as its flashier sidekick opticalled its way into my heart. It quietly knew that its time in the sun would return. And this week it did. I was given the chance to play with a new release from Microsoft — the Optical Desktop with Fingerprint Reader. The mouse is still the sleek, sexy partner in the duo and I gave it a welcoming nod as I unpacked it. And then I saw the keyboard. Yes, it had a cord attached (a slight regression from my previous model) but look — over there — on the left. A cunning little oval-shaped plastic pad that glows when you touch it! Biometrics have arrived in my home.

What does it do? There you are, surfing the web, and you encounter a page that requires a password. Perhaps its your online bank, maybe it’s your web-based e-mail or even your favourite read, the M&G Online. You need to input your username and password. Your human interface devices await the input from you, their human. But typing is so yesterday. You touch a finger to the keypad, it glows slightly and — voila! The hitherto locked web page opens up. Brilliant.

And that’s exactly what it is. I reckon I have about 10 or 12 online username/password combinations — each slightly different, each with a minor variance in spelling or sequence of numbers. This keyboard remembers them all. If you have far fewer passwords, then this probably isn’t the gadget for you. Put it in the ”nice to have” category rather than the ”must have” one.

Because it does have drawbacks. If you find yourself in the middle of the Karoo and you need someone else to log on to your PC to check your e-mail, you have two options. Either they’re going to need your finger, or you’re going to have to dive into the depths of your memory to try to unearth the combination of words or numbers that give you access to that particular site. Both a bit tricky, but severing a finger is probably the easier of the two.

And one or two other issues: it works fine with Windows XP, not (for some reason) with Windows 2000. It simply flies with Internet Explorer (giving you access to any site you’ve pre-programmed in about one second), but is rendered useless in Netscape and Firefox. For just over R1 000 I want to be able to choose my own browser and operating system, not be forced into a choice. Call me old-fashioned.

No, hang on, don’t. I’m not. I’ve progressed since my Acorn days and love the ”tilt wheel technology” in the mouse. It lets you scroll left and right ,as well as up and down. But that’s all fluff. The keyboard is king again and, frankly, that’s how it should be.

Tony Lankester spends his spare time as a writer and commentator on any subject that he thinks he can get away with. A former radio presenter, he’s particularly into technology, gadgets, the internet, the media, and advertising. But that doesn’t stop him posing as an expert on a range of subjects that covers food, single malt whisky, reality TV and travel. During the remaining hours, he has a respectable full-time job at a large financial services company.