nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (09/05/85)
If you believe the photo on the front of Amiga World:
1. There are two right-arrow cursor keys and none pointing down; great
for going East, but hard to go South. The same keyboard is shown on
page 23 -- one suspects all the pictures are of the self-same, one &
only prototype. I wonder if this indicates the quality control to be
expected in the production versions ...
2. The caps lock key is snuggled neatly between the "A" key and the
Ctrl key, so you can mash it by mistake really often -- like every
time you try to type Ctrl-C.
3. There's a nifty pair of keys marked "A" (for Amiga?) immediately to the
left and right of the space bar, INSIDE the pair of Alt keys. Know what
those do? They RESET THE COMPUTER! Now, there are only a few programs
that ask you to type Alt - anything, but DON'T MISS or you'll lose
all your work to date.
4. Accounting types will love that keypad for entering numbers by feel --
until they reach for the "+" key to add and find it missing. There *is*
a keypad key labeled "Enter," but on my HP Calculator "Enter" and "+"
do very different things.
Considering the screams of anguish that arose when the IBM PC Keyboard
was first shown about the placement of the "|\" key to the left of the "z",
I would have expected at least some comment on the rotten design bugs ...
uh, features of the Amiga keyboard.
Ah, but I forgot. You type with a mouse, right?
--
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDUtrudel@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Jonathan D.) (09/10/85)
> > 1. There are two right-arrow cursor keys and none pointing down; great > for going East, but hard to go South. The same keyboard is shown on > page 23 -- one suspects all the pictures are of the self-same, one & > only prototype. I wonder if this indicates the quality control to be > expected in the production versions ... Well, ANY new product is bound to have some flaws in its production, and I'm glad that it's relatively a minor problem. Would you rather it be the disk drive that is fawlty (sic) instead of a key being turned? > > 3. There's a nifty pair of keys marked "A" (for Amiga?) immediately to the > left and right of the space bar, INSIDE the pair of Alt keys. Know what > those do? They RESET THE COMPUTER! Now, there are only a few programs > that ask you to type Alt - anything, but DON'T MISS or you'll lose > all your work to date. Can you say 'Good Answer! Good Answer!' Well, the reset is actually accomplished by typing the two Amiga keys, AND the Control key. Kinda makes it hard to reset it, eh? It's quite similar to the Control-Alt-Delete combo the IBM PC has. I've seen and have used the Amiga keyboard to some extent, and I can say that the overall layout is good. The actual keyboard feel is comfortable, but I wish it wasn't so plastic to the touch. -- Jonathan D. Trudel arpa: trudel@blue.rutgers.edu.arpa uucp:{seismo,allegra,ihnp4}!topaz!trudel Bill: He's hip, he's hot, and he's hairy. -Rolling Stone
louie@trantor.UMD.EDU (09/11/85)
From: Louis A. Mamakos <louie@trantor.UMD.EDU> Do the two Amiga keys do anything else? I mean, do the generate some sort of keyboard code so you could use them as function keys or to do the same things that the mouse buttons do? YAAD, (Yet Another Amiga Developer, in a few days I hope) Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH University of Maryland, Computer Science Center Internet: louie@trantor.arpa -or- louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU