New Keyboard
My old Microsoft Natural Elite finally gave up the ghost after many years of faithful service. I really loved the keyboard. It had a nice feel, and it was a curved design, so it felt really good on my wrists. It did take me several weeks to get used to the curved design, but once I adjusted, I could type for many more hours than on a flat keyboard. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to a flat keyboard.
I went in search of something similar to what I had. I hit Best Buy, and CompUSA, and the only option that I could find was a new design from Microsoft. It’s the Natural Ergonomic 4000. It comes with fancy keys that I’ll probably never use. As a matter of fact, I had to install drivers before I could use the keyboard. How strange is that? I wonder if the basic functionality will work under Linux? I think the drivers were really for all of the special buttons that it comes with.
The new keyboard is of a similar form-factor as my old one. Matter of fact, this was the only keyboard that I could find that had a raised center like my old keyboard. The keys are softer to the touch, and the new keyboard is much quieter than the old keyboard. I’m going to wait a week or two and see if I really like the keyboard. If I do, I may get one for work, so that I have the same interface at both locations. I’ve tested this keyboard under Ubuntu Linux, and it works fine. However, the GRUB boot loader does not recognize the keyboard, but works fine once the system is booted into the operating system. Very odd. That’s ok. I can always use the keyboard built into the laptop (which still functions) to do anything in GRUB that I may need to do.
One downside of the new keyboard is that my BIOS on my laptop doesn’t like it very well. If I boot with the keyboard unplugged, everything works fine. If the keyboard is plugged in during boot time, then it will either lock up during boot, or boot really, really, really slowly, but it gets there. I’m starting to get into the habit of unplugging the keyboard during boot times to avoid this problem.
