fos
09-05-2007, 09:48 PM
I needed a new keyboard for a box I am building. I have been looking for a small footprint keyboard for sometime. I like the Happy Hacker Lite board but I have been reluctant to pay the approximate $75 price with shipping. I have heard very good things about them.
I finally purchased a house brand mini-keyboard from Directron, a mail order firm in Houston that I have been dealing with for several years. I have received very good service from Directron and their prices are very competitive. Whenever an order is placed in the morning on one day, I receive the item the next day by US Priority Mail. I ordered this keyboard on Sunday evening and received it on Wednesday due to the Labor Day holiday. The price was ~ $32 which came to a little less than $40 with shipping and tax since they are a Texas company and I live in Texas.
The quality is very good. The key travel and touch are about as good as anything I have used in recent memory. It is as good as my old IBM brand keyboard that I have been using for too many years. It is much better than the cheap stuff you get with most computers as standard today. It has a CTRL and ALT on both sides of the space bar which is very handy. The backspace and delete keys are placed where I am accustomed and work using the US pattern option in Linux. The only quirk besides the small footprint is the pattern of the arrow keys. Instead of being a standard "T" pattern, it has the left and right on the bottom, the down arrow to the right of the right arrow with the up arrow to the right of the shift key and below the Enter key. It takes a little getting used to but I'm working it out after only a few minutes.
I'm going to use it for a week or two. If I'm still favorably impressed, I may buy another for school.
Here is a link to the Directron page: http://directron.com/5100cbk.html
This isn't advertising, it is just for info. I'm only a customer of Directron.
fos....
I finally purchased a house brand mini-keyboard from Directron, a mail order firm in Houston that I have been dealing with for several years. I have received very good service from Directron and their prices are very competitive. Whenever an order is placed in the morning on one day, I receive the item the next day by US Priority Mail. I ordered this keyboard on Sunday evening and received it on Wednesday due to the Labor Day holiday. The price was ~ $32 which came to a little less than $40 with shipping and tax since they are a Texas company and I live in Texas.
The quality is very good. The key travel and touch are about as good as anything I have used in recent memory. It is as good as my old IBM brand keyboard that I have been using for too many years. It is much better than the cheap stuff you get with most computers as standard today. It has a CTRL and ALT on both sides of the space bar which is very handy. The backspace and delete keys are placed where I am accustomed and work using the US pattern option in Linux. The only quirk besides the small footprint is the pattern of the arrow keys. Instead of being a standard "T" pattern, it has the left and right on the bottom, the down arrow to the right of the right arrow with the up arrow to the right of the shift key and below the Enter key. It takes a little getting used to but I'm working it out after only a few minutes.
I'm going to use it for a week or two. If I'm still favorably impressed, I may buy another for school.
Here is a link to the Directron page: http://directron.com/5100cbk.html
This isn't advertising, it is just for info. I'm only a customer of Directron.
fos....