Generally, when I get a phone call about a computer problem it’s something like “Word won’t load”, or “the network icons don’t work any more”, or “the printer won’t do landscape.” Nine times out of ten the problem is software-related, and doesn’t take more than twenty minutes to fix. Not, however, this weekend.

In the last five days I’ve had four computers Just Stop Working. The first went down after a power cut, refusing to boot from a cd, let alone the hard disk. I diagnosed a motherboard b0rked beyond all hope, and put in an order for some replacement hardware. On Sunday my sister’s laptop abruptly stopped booting with “load needed dlls for kernel”, which was a new one on me. With a bit of luck that’s some kind of massive software cockup, and a repair install will fix it up. This morning one of the office PCs didn’t even get so far as booting, simply beeping like a demented droid. To be fair, it’s nearly six years old and is due for death fairly soon, so I ordered a replacement motherboard / cpu / ram for that too. This evening I’ve been told that my uncle’s laptop - only six months old - is stuck in a nearly-get-into-windows-but-conk-out-and-restart-just-before-anything-happens-loop, even in Safe Mode. First thoughts are that it’s a dying hard drive, but I’ll need to take a look.

It’s really not all that common to have such major problems. I must have upset the electron fairy.

I’ve finally been forced to buy a new motherboard, and it arrived yesterday. It’s an Asus A8R-MVP, and features include:

• Use incredibly complex USB devices like webcams / iPods / card readers without taking down Windows!
• Plug in firewire drives without completely kakking up the boot process, requiring a keypress on every restart!
• No ridiculously broken¹ hardware firewall!

The above problems were inherent in my Abit nForce4 KN8 motherboard, and seem to be quite common in the nForce4 line. I’m staying well clear of that particular brand from now on. The new mobo is an entirely different chipset, and is reputed to Actually Work Properly.

Motherboard replacements are probably the most annoying operation to perform on a computer. The whole case has to be taken apart and reassembled, and then Windows must be completely reinstalled. It’ll certainly be worth it, but will take a fair while, so I’ll leave it until next week.

1. some have claimed that it is possible, with windows reinstalls and all sorts of software manipulation, to get this working properly - even if true, it’s still crazy [↩]

I’ve been experiencing worryingly RSI-like pains in my fingers for a few months, and after trying a friend’s ‘natural’ keyboard I decided to pick one up. A day later I saw an Engadget preview of the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, so figured I’d wait for that. It arrived from Microdirect last Wednesday, and since reviews are thin on the ground I figure it’s worth writing my early thoughts.

First impressions on removing it from the box: it’s big. Much bigger than ‘normal’ keyboards. The effect is increased dramatically by the tilt: the front of the keyboard is raised a fair distance from the desk surface, for a ‘more natural wrist posture’. It’s not clear whether this allows you to rest your wrists while typing without it being bad for you. The wrist rest is leather and is much more comfortable than the waste-of-time plastic rests supplied with other keyboards.

The styling is black and silver, with a Microsoft logo in the top-right corner. It’s certainly eye-catching, and I think it’s very smart. It’s much heavier than your average keyboard, which gives it a solid feel. It’s corded, with a good length cable.

The keyboard is in the familiar ‘natural’ format, with a split after 6, T, G and B and both sides angled away from each other. I find this extremely comfortable. It’s a large change from the normal elbows-against-sides, arms straight forwards posture, but is immediately a much more pleasant experience. Usage is another matter, but I’ll come back to that. This keyboard is the first time that key sizes are different depending upon their position, with very wide N, T , G and H keys. Not having used the previous style of natural keyboard I can’t comment on how much easier this makes things, but I will say that I can easily reach every letter without excessive stretching - however my fingers are particularly long and thin, so your mileage may vary.

The top row contains multimedia keys. On the far left are Home Page, Search and Mail buttons. These are followed by five customizable Favourites buttons, then Mute, Volume Controls, Play/Pause and finally, bizarrely, Calculator. Below this row is a ‘My Favourites’ button, which brings up the interface for configuring the Favourites buttons.

The most important thing to note is that these keys are entirely configurable, and can each be set to open web pages, any application, a function (from a a pre-configured list) such as ‘minimize all windows’ or even be disabled entirely if you like. My previous Logitech keyboard had a Sleep button that wasn’t at all accessible, and when you have a computer that crashes on trying to enter the Sleep state it’s really not a button you want to hit accidentally!

The volume controls work straight out of the box, and the Play/Pause controlled iTunes without further configuration, although does experience problems if the iTunes window is in focus (attempting to pause a track causes it so stutter and continue.) It’d be nice to have a Next Track button, but I guess that’s do-able with the Favourites buttons.

The F-keys also have dual functions, which are toggled by the F-lock key located to the right of the F-key row. My previous problem with this functionality was that the F-lock setting would be reset on restarting the computer, but USB keyboards apparently don’t suffer from this problem (I’m told there is a utility to set the f-lock on Microsoft PS/2 keyboards, but no Logitech equivalent.) Again, the functions are all configurable, although descriptions are written on the keys.

There are four extra buttons above the number pad: equals, open and close brackets, and another backspace. I guess these are for people who work with the number pad for much of the day, and probably explains the Calculator button too. I can’t see these coming in very useful for me, however.

Below the spacebar are Forward and Back buttons for web browsing. These fall nicely under the thumbs, and are slightly easier to reach than backspace and, um, whatever Forward is normally.

Finally, between the keyboard split is zoom slider, and this is the keyboard’s only major failing for me. The zoom slider does exactly what you’d expect, and allows you to zoom into Word documents, web pages or digital photographs. However, you can’t reconfigure it to scroll. The zooming is of limited use to me, but a fast way to scroll would be very useful indeed. Yeah, there’re the arrow keys, but the placement of the zoom slider allow surfing with with very little movement of the wrists. I hope the next software release adds this functionality.

So, it may have all of these features, but how is it to use?

The first thing I’d say is that you need to know how to type ‘properly’, if only in theory. Keeping the hands on their respective sides of the keyboard is a major feature of typing courses, but is a rule that can happily be broken on standard keyboards. The natural shape, along with the slant downwards, forces you to keep your hands in place, and this is surprisingly challenging! I learnt from my sister’s copy of Mavis Beacon about 18 months ago, but didn’t get much further than the intermediary stage and have slipped back into bad habits since. I’m not bad at the characters, but never got the hang of the number row and the associated symbols.

The height of the keyboard forces you to sit correctly. I’ve tried slouching backwards, wrists heavy on the rests, and this starts hurting quite quickly. You can’t sit at any kind of angle, either. The keyboard is basically forcing you to sit straight on, with a straight back and your arms angled inwards. As far as I’m aware, this is an excellent position for minimising RSI effects and back problems.

It’s definitely a keyboard for the serious typist. Typing with one hand (get your minds out of the gutter, people) gets annoying very quickly, and you really need two hands on the keyboard at all times. I also have to remove my watch due to the size of the wrist rest, but that’s not a big issue
The sound of the keys is surprisingly muted, but the keyboard doesn’t suffer from spongy keys. The tactile feedback is enough to be certain you’ve pressed the key, without being excessive. The height of the keys differs, dropping in the centre of the major key blocks, and I think this works very well. Your fingers should default to A, S, D and F on the left, and J, K, L and ; on the right. Because of the rise in the rows above and below this centre row, every time you reach for a key above or below the centre row you’re not pushing any further down than you would be on the centre row itself. Combined with the slanted keys, this makes for extremely easy typing.

Pros:

• Very comfortable
• Completely customizable buttons (with the exception of the zoom slider)
• Stylish
• Great for RSI and posture
• Solid and of good build quality
• Quiet, but responsive

Cons:

• The zoom slider is less useful than a scroll slider
• The keyboard takes some getting used to
• Typing skills are a must
• A little expensive (mine was

From the Logitech website:

This is the latest software release for most tethered cameras and the QuickCam Cordless camera

Tethered! I have an image of webcams trying to escape, Patrick McGoohan like, and Logitech being forced to tether them to the USB port. Hmm, I wonder if the slight current in the USB cable acts as some kind of depressant, supressing the inherent rev0lutionary tendencies…This could be a scandal. There’ll be protesters wittering on about lens rights, looking bedraggled and digging out old webcams from landfills.

I used Ed’s natural (split) keyboard a couple of weeks ago, and found it extremely comfortable. I was on the verge of ordering one yesterday, but this afternoon I’ve spotted this:

Engadget reports that, aside from the swish new look, it has a zoom slider (?) and programmable keys. It also has ‘insert’ and ‘home’ in the correct place. Stunning. It’s not actually out yet, but I’m definitely going to order one once they arrive.