Physical keys are needed for serious typing I'm afraid. It might prove useful though for content consumption. I think that it's an innovative idea, but not something good for serious typists. I have a pair of them just for this scenario. But both at work and when I work from home, I use the MS Natural 4000. Not sure, because I hook it up to a pair of much larger monitors and mainly use those. It's weirdly weighty (maybe because it still has an optical drive for some reason), but I think it's a 15.6" screen.
My software development is done on the company supplied Dell Latitude with an HD screen and otherwise surprisingly good specs (i7, 8GB RAM, SSD, etc.). If you're doing software development on 10" ultrabook, I feel for you regardless of keyboard it might have. Maybe this Lenovo Yoga Book will be as close as we will get to the MS Courier.Įdit: And why wouldn't they call it the Yoga Mat? Missed opportunity. We're restricted from BIOS/UEFI changes so I couldn't swap the F keys from the their standard function like brightness but a co-worker discovered FN+Esc locks it so now F5 is refresh not screen brightness. ever in your life it's annoying not to have it there in the corner as a tactile edge a known area (I'm looking at you too OS X!!) I do use it every two seconds and end up pressing FN.
Plus the function (FN) key is at the lower left where the CTRL key should be damn it! If you've ever oh you know used CTRL+V or CTRL+C etc. Īs for Lenovo we got new laptops at work recently they're Lenovo Yoga and I think it's hilarious they don't have a light to indicate the Caps lock is on, an on-screen display isn't available either.
There is a video of it I'd urge you to watch it and note that this concept is from almost ten years ago. I liked the Microsoft Courier concept it was more than just two screens it was the way it all worked together it looked very well put together I'm surprised MS didn't make it. It's just something I got used to in the mid-90s and now, it's a rough go in meetings where all I have is my laptop for notes. My hands are bigger than most, but not unusually huge like a basketball player's might be. I find that typing even on a regular laptop keyboard (or in some cases, just a regular desktop keyboard) really cramps my hands after 20-30 minutes, as in it starts to hurt. I've typed this entire response on one of those (MS Natural 4000) without looking at the keys. It also takes way longer.Īnd, on a personal note, all these specialized things seem to forget that there's a fairly substantial market (a minority, but not a tiny one) that prefers the larger split keyboards like the MS Natural Feel line of keyboards and its competitors. If you have to type for a living (I.e., software developers, BAs, QA people, writers, etc.) or just find yourself needing to write a longer email, then a screen-based keyboard is just asking for typos and sometimes fantastically weird/funny auto-corrects. If you just need to text your significant other or a friend or otherwise take a short note or write a short email, then a screen keyboard is fine. Which is exactly why smartphones with real physical keyboards have dominated the marked, while keyboardless slabs have died out. Don't believe me? Type for an hour or two on a table, let me know how your fingertips feel." Your fingers will seriously hurt from typing on this in any normal capacity.
Keys on a keyboard absorb the impact from your fingers. Quote from /u/atello on reddit: "Typing on a flat surface is a real pain.