As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been getting tired of the keyboard that I have at home. I’ve had it since December 2004, and it’s well past its use-by date. I bought it while living in the UK and hence it has the UK keyboard layout. This was fine while I lived in the UK, but has been a nuisance since being back in Australia. Every other keyboard that I use has the US layout. So every time I come home I end up making mistakes while typing because keys aren’t where my head thinks they are! Aside from the layout issue, some keys were starting to get a bit dodgey and were failing to recognise keypresses.
Today I finally replaced it. I invested in a new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard which feels really comfortable. In the past I’ve avoided these funky shaped keyboards as they haven’t really felt right, but this one really does feel good. It has a stack of extra features and buttons, and I think it’ll have a well-deserved existence on my desktop. The keys are nice and quiet, and they don’t seem to struggle to register like the old one did (a good sign for a new keyboard I know ;)).
There is but one small issue - the space bar. While the other keys are just fine, the space bar is one noisy key. It dishes out quite a clunk each time it’s pushed. The reason for this is that if I don’t push it hard enough the bugger won’t godown (see, there’s a classic example of it). To get it to push down, I have to hit it quite hard and that’s where the noise is coming from. Right now I’m a little concerned about it, and I’m hoping that it’ll get quieter and less noisy as it “wears in”.
While I was shopping I thought I may as well fix a couple of other issues that I have mentioned in my other post about activation.
First of all I now have a new stick of RAM, so I’m back up to 1GB. Unfortunately I can’t go any higher due to my borked motherboard, but it’ll do for now. There is a noticable difference in speed now that I’m back up to that amount.
Next up I bought some more Artic Silver thermal grease. I was informed a while back by a mate (Marc) that I’d botched the grease job on my GPU and hence the temps were stupidly high. So I’ve grabbed some more of this stuff to fix it up. I’ll get to that over the weekend, and hopefully we’ll see an improvement in GPU temperatures.
Lastly, I bought a new webcam. I did have a Logitech QuickCam Messenger, but it was basically a pile of shit because:
- The image quality was awful.
- It didn’t work on Vista.
- It didn’t work on x64.
- It didn’t work on Linux.
I did a bit of research, and ended up buying a Creative WebCam Vista, which has nothing to do with Microsoft’s Vista. For AUD $20 you seriously can’t go wrong. The camera is a fantastic purchase and does everything I need it to!
On the whole I’m happy with my purchases. I just hope this damned space bar doesn’t ruin it all!
January 5, 2008
Changing hardware? that was a bit risky wasn’t it? You may have had to activate again!
I use a US keyboard at home and most of the time I don’t mind. The only exception being it doesn’t have a key with ‘£’ on. Not always a problem but still a bit frustrating. I did try running with the keyboatd set to UK layout but there’s one less key on my keyboard than on UK keyboard so setting it to UK layout meant I ended up losing one of the slashes which was worse than losing the ‘£’ key.
January 5, 2008
I bought a Logitech Quickcam messenger, because it was cheap at 20 quid (UKP). The image quality is pretty dreadful, which to be honest for the price I expected. However it keeps dropping out. This could well be skype’s rubbish video phone implementation though… have you had similar experiences with Skype? I’m running XP Pro SP2, not tried it under linux yet, but I take your work there’s no support.
I also have the problem now that I work with a US/Canadian keyboard at work and UK keyboards (laptop + desktop) at home. It hasn’t been too much of an issue apart from the occasional bad ” or @. So I’ll stay put I think for the mean time.
January 5, 2008
Go easy on the AS5 this time oj
January 5, 2008
@Gav: Yeah I was worried that a new RAM stick might cause problems with the activation, but thankfully it didn’t happen this time!
@Jim: The @ and ” symbals are the primary culprits, but depending on the layout of the board you can have problems with /, \ and | too. The camera I bought does have Linux support through a third party driver, and it works flawlessly through Skype on Vista and XP x64. So the problem isn’t Skype it’s the camera
@Marc: I still have the PDF you sent, and after I’ve cleaned off the old stuff I”ll but sure to do it properly. Thanks for the heads up :P
January 5, 2008
yer yer i know youll smother it in AS5 again
i need more room in my current gpu setup as they get pretty warm after a few hours of cod4 which i suggest u buy mate 
January 5, 2008
I promise I’ve learned my lesson
Wish I could invest in games, but at the mo I need to be tight with the funds mate. As soon as it hits the bargain bin I might be able to afford it!
January 8, 2008
UK layout FTW! I remember having to slightly relearn the keyboard layout when I changed from my old Archimedes to a PC. There was no “\” key next to “Z”, just a long shift key on that one (amongst a few other changes).
I did a similar thing to my old motherboard (breaking RAM slots), which is what prompted me to give in and buy my new PC a couple of months ago. 2 gig with Vista64 seems a nice sweet spot, though I could go up to 16 gig on this motherboard if I need (and Vista64 will address it!).
January 29, 2008
This is why I think the new keyboards implemented as a configurable touchscreen are going to become ubiquitous when prices drop.
Imagine moving around between countries and being able to change your keyboard layout through software. The utility of this is really obvious when you jump big cultural boundaries like a Kanji keyboard in China.
LCDs and touchscreen panels just keep getting cheaper and they are bound to drop in price. Yes, I know we’ll all look like we’re sitting at the helm of the Enterprise with out real-time animated software configured touchscreen keyboards - but honestly, isn’t that what the entire computer technology revolution was aiming at all along, anyway?
January 29, 2008
I’d agree, but they’re damned expensive. One thing that’s going to be tough to get used to though is the lack of a tactile response when you press a key. The idea of the reprogrammable keys rocks though.