Shock! Horror! Microsoft release usable keyboards!

  • Artykuł

Many of us at Microsoft have hated our own keyboards for a number of years. I personally am a natural keyboard fan, and I hoarded the original "good" Natural Keyboard and the only decent follow-up, the Natural Keyboard Pro. Since these great keyboards were produced, the MS keyboards went downhill fast for me.

The first sign of insanity was the rearrangement of the cursor keys from an inverted T, as they have been since the dawn of time, into an actual cross arrangement. Then the insert/delete pad was randomly re-arranged on each new model, and LEDs for caps lock etc seem to get very hard to find. But the final straw was the F-lock feature for sure: this made the function keys not work as function keys until you pressed F-lock. And if your machine rebooted, F-lock was off again.Trying to get into a BIOS via F1 was an exercise in futility with one of these things.

Here on MS Campus there are occasional "fire sales" and I did buy a pile of not-current MS keyboards for $10-$20 a pop, and I have to say that many of them were not worth even that much. They suffered some of the above ailments and all of them had the dreaded F-lock. I did adopt a wireless natural one at home, but its F-lock still bothers me immensely and the oversized Delete is a huge pain.

However, today I am very pleased to announce an apparent end to the insanity: Microsoft has released some new keyboards including a sensible looking natural keyboard that I am highly likely to pay money for! Hoorah! Its F-lock remembers its status across a reboot. It has the classic insert/delete/cursor key arrangement. It even has a USB plug. I don't know what its like to type on yet, that will have to wait for another day, but at last someone seems to be listening. Thank You Microsoft Hardware.

The main Hardware web site hasn't yet been updated, but go here for further info.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2005
    I hate that stupid F key... Remembering status across reboots is good, I always wished there was a hardware toggle for bootup state.
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2005
    I was a long-time (fiercely) loyal user of MS Natural keyboards, but two factors made me change:

    1. Cordless - I HATE the cord and needed that to go away

    2. The Logitech laser mouse - there is simply no comparison (so far at least)

    So I tried out a Logitech MX 3100 set. It has many of the things you don't like - "new" layout of navigation keys, "F mode" and non-split layout. At first, I didn't like it much, but I stuck with it, and and after a couple of days, I quickly got used to it.

    The F mode is really a non-issue, since it always comes up to the previous state (enabled), and I also got used to and started to like the nav key arrangement, especially the larger Delete key and moving the insert key "out of the way" (I realize now that I only had one program that used that key, and not I rarely use that program any more either).

    I spend 60-80 hours/week using the keyboard and mouse, so comfort is important. I don't personally notice much/any difference in comfort between split and non-split - it seems to be more the case of getting used to one or the other. I can't imagine how a split keyboard can affect RSI much, but I am not an expert.

    The new MS keyboard looks really nice, but I'll be sticking with my MX3100 because I can't even imagine having a cord again, or giving up my laser mouse. I think MS kind of missed the boat in these two areas - hopefully we'll see some products like this in the near future.
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2005
    This F-Lock is the worst feature ever, and these new keyboards solve nothing. I use a keyboard/mouse/video switch to regularly switch between 4 PC’s; to do this I just hit the print screen key on my keyboard. Sounds simple enough and was until I purchased the Natural Multimedia Keyboard with F-Lock. Now to switch between PC's I have to turn F-Lock off (to enable the Print Screen key), hit print screen and then hit F-Lock to re-enable the Function Keys. Do this more than a few times a day and it gets really, really annoying. With the switch costing about 7 times what the keyboard cost, I know which one I’ll be tossing first.
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2005
    I still use a MS Office keybaord at work and home, and find the F lock frustrating. Also it's getting increasingly difficult to find suport under newer operating systems (XP x64, Vista). It's bizarre that my preferred Linux disto (SUSE) supports the keyboard better than MS latest OS's.

    However I still persist because of those Cut, Copy and Paste buttons on the left, I'm a software developer and use those keys a whole lot. So do the rest of my team, we all use MS Office keyboards.

    Now if someone could combine Cut, Copy and Paste buttons, a sensible default F-lock, wireless USB connectivity and drivers for all MS OS's they'd have at least 20 sales right here.
  • Anonymous
    September 06, 2005
    The thing I hate most about the MS keyboards is the missing insert key. Messing with the classical rectangle of 6 keys, ins / del / home / end / pgup / pgdn, is a sure way to lose a programmer's support, especially considering the years spent honing quick text-editing skills.

    Since I type with a Dvorak layout, Ctrl+XCV aren't good Cut/Copy/Paste keys.

    Shift+NumPad-0 isn't a good insert key, since it requires the numlock key to be off; the numpad keys do operate as cursors when you type them with the Shift key, but you can't double-shift to get an insert out of 0.

    And, of course, so many copycats out there are now producing unusable keyboards too. It's unforgivable.
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2005
    You know I got to laugh, I really thought I was the only one that hoarded keyboards. I have my favorite Logitech keyboard which came to be my favorite when MS was messing around with all the arrow keys and stuff. I was going through a rough patch there for some reason and managed to spill coffee, Mountain Dew, Milk etc into about 8 keyboards in a month some keyboards after I bought them got them home I just couldn't get used them. Anyway I finally found a good logitech keyboard that felt good all the keys were in the right place so I went out and purchased 10 of them. 1 for work one for home. Now either fortunately or unfortunately since I bought 10 of them almost 3 years ago I haven't had to replace a single one. It always amazed me when I was going through all those keboards that Microsoft was messing with the keyboard configuration so much. I wondered if they tested them out amongst their own employees. The keyboard is one of the most important things on a computer really.
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2005
    I'm also a big fan of the Natural Keyboard Pro - have 3 stockpiled now.

    I refuse to buy any of the keyboards without the arrow keys with the inverted T layout and the standard 3 across, 2 down Insert/Delete layout. I tried one of the newer ones one time and I kept hitting the wrong keys all the time. So I gave the keyboard away.

    I didn't even know about the F-lock issue - man that must be a pain.
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2005
    Can a non-MS person buy leftover MS Natural Pros anywhere? (Don't suggest Ebay, I don't use Ebay.) I have only one of those, and I care for it and protect it like it was my child.
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 07, 2005
    This is good news, finally I can see about upgrading natural pro, but still, no wireless???
  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2005
    nice! it's greaet to see that someone in the hardware team realized there's a market for natural keyboards with the classic layout. I have a collection of Natural Pro's. I just bought another one on EBay for $50+ for spare parts - the matrix tracks seem to be somewhat soluble in orange juice ;-)
  • Anonymous
    September 22, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 07, 2005
    Well I tried one for a few minutes. The good news is the layout - it appears to be fully sane. Some of the keys are a strangely large (e.g. T), but it looks livable with. However, the bad news is the feel: it is SUPER mushy. It feels like a $10 kbd, real soft. Nothing like the Natural Original or Pro. It might be a deal breaker for work: I type all day, and I need it to feel right. I might survive using it at home, where I type a lot less. Disappointing though.

    One bonus: it has a faux leather covering on the front, which I felt compelled to caress. Several times. Weird.
  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2005
    Plus it is USB only: no more PS/2. Makes it hard to use a KVM, or get into an older BIOS.
  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2006
    Yeah, I too hated the F Lock "feature." But I couldn't get by without my comfy Natural Keyboard, and I didn't want ot shell out $200-300 for another co.'s ergonomic keyboard.

    Take heart, guys. Here's a simple registry change that flips the F-Lock setting each time you boot:

    F Lock Flip
    http://www.mvps.org/jtsang/flock.html

    Cheers, Andy
  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2006
    Oops, sorry about the redundant posts. I wanted to add my email, but I guess I didn't catch the first "Submit" in time.
  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2006
    Hi everyone.  

    Thank you for mentioning my F Lock page.  Just wanted to let you guys know that I updated the page.  The method that I previously used was the scan code mapper, which unfortunately didn't help those that used USB connections.  I've now included a method that works with USB keyboards; however, you need to have Intellitype Pro (5.2 or higher).

    Give it a try/read and hopefully it is something that will be useful to you.

    http://jtsang.mvps.org/flock.html
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2008
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