Asus IS Shifting their Keyboard Approach
Huzzah! It’s true! Asus is indeed modifying the keyboards in their Eee PC line! Before CES, we heard reports of Asus revamping their Eee PC keyboards so that the Right-Shift key was in a more traditional spot. While I was literally Eee-shooting Eee-pictures from alongside him, Brad Linder was chatting with the Asus folks. He’s reporting that the new keyboard layout will be on most every new Asus Eee PC going forward. One exception is the T91 convertible touch-eee, feel-eee netebook, but considering that’s still a semi-concept device, we can always hope it gets the change as well.
In honesty, not everyone cares about the Right-Shift key as much as I do. It’s a challenge I jumped on right away when I noticed on a netbook and I haven’t stopped barking about it ever since. But as I said earlier this week: netbooks are already using a compromised keyboard in terms of size, why further compromise with non-standard key placement? In any case, I suspect most Eee PC layouts will look what Brad saw recently in a manual for the 1002HA & S101H.
Asus Eee PC keyboard design
Call me crazy, but the Eee PCs will definitely make the cut on some people’s “netbooks to consider” list after this. I feel more productive just thinking about this. R-eee-ally!
Frankly, I’m surprised that fullsize keyboards still reflect DOS / home programming-era demands, rather than the requirements of most of today’s users and software. To then try and miniaturize that into the much smaller footprint of a netbook almost guarantees an unnecessarily cramped workspace.
Of the netbook manufacturers, Dell has attempted to address some of that by shifting function keys, rather inelegantly, onto other keys (if only because of the size of their battery), but the bigger question might remain, why do we still have function keys? Or Pause/Break? Page Up/Down, Home, End? Especially on dedicated keys?
The ‘useful’ section of a keyboard for most users remains compromised on most netbooks, including with the ‘improved’ EeePC layout.
You can pry my dedicated function keys from my cold, dead hands!
Kevin: please keep barking. This is a dealbreaker issue for me in a purchase decision too.
Baz: good points!
The problem I have had on both of my EEE PC’s has been too much flex in the keyboard. I do think this new spacing will be good, but I really hope they fix up the flex issues.
I agree that asus keyboards suck. It is a deal breaker for me too. I am glad they are getting rid of the issue.