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Stealth Keyboard

Keyboard without markings
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A jet-black keyboard without markings(letters, #'s, everything) for:

Learning: You'll never need look at your keys again.

Aesthetics: It looks trick

Security: People looming over you can't watch you type in your password.

Flex, Jan 21 2003

Paint your computer http://www.everythi...45616&node_id=20224
Lots of ideas. See The Custodian's Advanced Techniques for things to do with your keyboard. [kropotkin, Oct 04 2004]

A better keyboard layout http://www.webopedi...vorak_keyboard.html
the QWERTY (standard) key board was design to slow you down [sin, Oct 04 2004]

Elek Tex Fabric http://www.eleksen.com
[bristolz, Oct 04 2004]

Black keyboard with blank keys http://daskeyboard.com/
Now baked! Hoorah!
Kudos to angel for finding the link. [DrBob, Nov 17 2005]

[link]






       Give me a keyboard, some 1-1-1 tricloroethylene and some Q-tips and I'll bake it for ya!
Cedar Park, Jan 21 2003
  

       I like it. Really easy bakeable. Probably I'll try to do it with one of my keyboards...
Inyuki, Jan 21 2003
  

       Sort of like using your mouse when it's rotated 180 degrees.
FarmerJohn, Jan 21 2003
  

       How about red LEDs in the keycaps with capacitative proximity sensors, so the keys glow with little red symbols when your fingers hover over them ?
8th of 7, Jan 21 2003
  

       I really do want a stealth keyboard - but not as you suggested. Instead, I'd like to be able to work in silence.   

       BT used to make a PBX keyboard with sensor depressions. It senses you'r finger not there's no mechanical action. This would work for the keyboard.   

       I fugure a pressure sensor for the mouse buttons and a cushioned base for the mouse too.
FloridaManatee, Jan 21 2003
  

       Go to the office supply store and ask for a roll of those little colored dot-stickers, the smallest they have. They're the perfect size for covering the letters, but easily removed. Draw or photocopy a map of your keyboard, tape that to the wall and look there if you need. Fastest way to learn to type, or break the looking at fingers habit.   

       I know it's covered elsewhere, but it is awfully strange that we're still stuck with this uncomfortable keyboard design where the operator is forced to adapt to the machine. With all the alternative proposals, from spheres to gloves, we're still using a design that hasn't changed much from the begining. Gotta love all that innovation.
rowlycat, Jan 21 2003
  

       // I know it's covered elsewhere, but it is awfully strange that we're still stuck with this uncomfortable keyboard design where the operator is forced to adapt to the machine. //   

       Well, couple things... 1) It works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.   

       2) preschoolers complain about being forced to adapt to the alphabet; this doesn't mean the alphabet is screwed up and evil.   

       3) There's been no conclusive evidence yet of any superior layouts. ( I'd love to be proved wrong, if anyone has seen any. )   

       4) It's standard. You can go all over the world and, even if the keys are in different places, at least the darn thing's shaped the same.
Corona688, Jan 21 2003
  

       Well, the really strange part was the modern QWERTY layout was designed to slow the typing down so typewriters wouldn't get jammed all the time. I like the idea of a thing that you put on your head like a cap, and then you just think about, say the topic of your paper, and it writes the whole thing for you.
dtstyle, Jan 21 2003
  

       My masters at the office have kindly replaced my lovely clickety-clack keyboard with this horrible, black Dell...thing. I shall endeavour to bake this idea as swiftly as possible. In fact, the Shift key is fading even as I type.
DrBob, Jan 22 2003
  

       I think people make more typos on black keyboards. Just a personal theory I have.
waugsqueke, Jan 22 2003
  

       Yeah, those black Dell keyboards with the faulty screen printing that wears off really quickly. Not all of their black keyboards suffer from this problem though, I have found. On some of them the ink is almost embossed on and much tougher.   

       And [waugs] where in hell do you get your data?!
bristolz, Jan 22 2003
  

       Aha!
bristolz, Jan 22 2003
  

       As a practical joke, I once rearranged all the keycaps on a co-worker's machine in alphabetical order (instead of QWERTY). Since he doesn't touch-type, it drove him nuts trying to put it all back to normal.
How about an extension to 8th's idea: Keys glow with lower-case letters normally, but switch to caps when shift is pressed (extend to numbers/symbols as appropriate). This would also make it easier to type in a darkened room (as I often do when playing games, switching from wsad/shift/control/d-pad to text and back quickly).
Freefall, Jan 22 2003
  

       Is it really hunt and peck if you aren't looking? There is no hunt, its just peck.
notme, Jan 23 2003
  

       Hmm. Why not add a soft "backlight" inside the keyboard, to add to the glowing keycaps? And, of course, caps and diodes so it's pulsing slowly...
Spaceman42, Apr 28 2003
  

       // Well... QWERTY wasn't really about slowing you down, it was about alternating locations in the mechanism. //   

       It was about both. That's why only one of the six highest frequency letters (ETAOIN), A, is in the home keys (the eight keys under the fingers of a touch typist about to type), and even the A is under the weakest finger.   

       <trivia>The longest English word you can make from a single row on the keyboard is TYPEWRITER... unless TRIPEWRITER is a word.</trivia>
sandfly, Jul 23 2003
  

       In fact, you can do better and form the 11-letter words: proprietory, proterotype and rupturewort with just the top row.
gihan, Dec 11 2003
  

       For added stealth, turn off your monitor also when you use this keyboard.
phundug, Dec 11 2003
  

       Good Heavens. Das Keyboard came to my attention a while back, but I had no idea it had been languishing in the HB archives for so long. Kudos to [Flex]!
moomintroll, Nov 17 2005
  

       //There is no hunt, its just peck.// [marked-for-tagline]
neo_, Dec 13 2009
  
      
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