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Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

sonderdesign.com

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Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#121

Post by the_duke »

brokenmachine wrote: post #117

Is it really that hard to remember keys for different applications that you need expensive displays on every key? Learning to touchtype has been the most efficient use of my time ever. As a mechanical keyboard user, chiclet non-mechanical keys just feel like garbage to me now. Like my laptop which I hate using only because of the keyboard. Absolutely no tactile feel at all. Just mushy little islands that my fingers c…

Sure it's easy, for the two or three applications you use each and every day, and for the shortcuts you use all the time.

Want to use a shortcut you only need every once in a while, which is non the less buried in 3 levels of confusing menus?

Want to use shortcuts in a program you only use from time to time?

Want to learn how to efficiently use a new program, without popping over to the (potentially long and confusing) shortcut list all the time?

Do you have to write in different languages from time to time, and aren't that familiar with the keyboard layouts? (Think spanish, german, japa/chinese/...)

This can be a big benefit, if applications support it!

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#122

Post by the_duke »

djhworld wrote: post #90
mmanfrin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'cloud connected' stuff is an obnoxious gimmick, but Das's upcoming 5q is pretty close to what you're looking for: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1229573443/das-keyboard...

I have a Das Keyboard, it's a really nice product, mechanical switches etc. I don't see a use case for this though, I rarely look at my keyboard.

And why is that?

Because usually there's absolutely no reason to do so, because it's static and you you have the layout in muscle memory.

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#123

Post by the_duke »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #74
belltaco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but e-ink technology has come a long long way since then.

Has it? I haven't heard about any important improvements for quite some time... What has changed? (genuinly curious)

Just compare the very first Kindle to the current generation of ebook readers. They have been improved a lot, and the mass production capabilities exist now.

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#125

Post by y80 »

SonderDesign wrote: post #82

Hi HN, I'm one of the engineers working on the project, if you have any questions please ask.

It says on the site that all your configurations are saved automatically to the cloud. How exactly do you go about achieving this? Is there any way to disable this functionality?

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#126

Post by y80 »

Kenji wrote: post #3

And here I am looking down at my keyboard, which looks like this: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81amtBk%2BvqL._SL1500_... And wondering what an E-Ink Keyboard is good for in the real world (this is a genuine question).

>And wondering what an E-Ink Keyboard is good for in the real world

Multilingual people who want to type in different languages easily?

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#127

Post by nine_k »

ars wrote: post #66

It's a cool idea, but why are the keys so flat and smooth and untextured? How can you type if you can't feel the keys under your hand, or if your fingers slide around instead of being centered on each key?

The keys are screens. They won't need the caps to distort the e-ink images.

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#128

Post by blisse »

brokenmachine wrote: post #117

Is it really that hard to remember keys for different applications that you need expensive displays on every key? Learning to touchtype has been the most efficient use of my time ever. As a mechanical keyboard user, chiclet non-mechanical keys just feel like garbage to me now. Like my laptop which I hate using only because of the keyboard. Absolutely no tactile feel at all. Just mushy little islands that my fingers c…

Absolutely it's hard to remember keys. Trying to remember hotkeys when I switch between Visual Studio, Android Studio, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe InDesign is actually quite annoying. More so with Photoshop and InDesign.

Anyways it's still nice to have.

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#129

Post by simplexion »

kentt wrote: post #88
iheartmemcache wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly: RSI is no joke - if you're experiencing pain, there's a non-zero chance it'll develop into a serious medical condition. (At MIT's Media Lab, someone's RSI got so bad he couldn't type at all and had to invent an interface using vocal phonemes to encode common OS actions/lexical keywords to control his OS (OS X) / editor (emacs) / language of choice (python)). If you feel even the slightest bit of pain, that's…

Echoing the parent, take it very seriously. One thing that helped me was an verticle mouse (Evoluent C in my case). There's on one thing that will solve you're problems, just bit a pieces that will contribute to long term management. One other thing is WorkRave which reminds me to take breaks. This is helpful for my hands, but has been frustrating for getting into the groove of programming.

The vertical mouse thing being "ergonomic" is nonsense. There are studies that have shown this. From memory it was generally worse for you to use a vertical mouse in terms of productivity and comfort.

The only thing vertical mice reduce is wrist movement.

Re: Sonder E-Ink Keyboard

#130

Post by wallacoloo »

blisse wrote: post #128
brokenmachine wrote: post #117

Is it really that hard to remember keys for different applications that you need expensive displays on every key? Learning to touchtype has been the most efficient use of my time ever. As a mechanical keyboard user, chiclet non-mechanical keys just feel like garbage to me now. Like my laptop which I hate using only because of the keyboard. Absolutely no tactile feel at all. Just mushy little islands that my fingers c…

Absolutely it's hard to remember keys. Trying to remember hotkeys when I switch between Visual Studio, Android Studio, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe InDesign is actually quite annoying. More so with Photoshop and InDesign. Anyways it's still nice to have.

Also a big thing is undocumented shortcuts (or shortcuts for functions that I didn't even know the program was capable of). Gnome's push for standardizing Ctrl+? to display a shortcut window is a good start - hitting that in Nautilus shows me a bunch of stuff I had no idea about - but that's not likely to see much adoption outside of Gnome.

Additionally, plenty of 'legacy' applications (MATLAB's linux version, the Cadence Design Suite, etc) don't use standard shortcuts at all. I don't even know how to copy/paste in MATLAB off the top of my head - just that it sure as hell isn't Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V. Keyboard icons would be a boon for that.

In any case, if you don't look at your keyboard, you're hardly inconvenienced - you could even just disable the feature altogether. If these see widespread adoption/lower cost, it will aid some people while actually inconveniencing very few, so I see it as net positive.

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