chrstnsn@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Christensen) (06/23/89)
Having used the new SPARCstation keyboard, I must admit that I do not like it as well as the older Sun-3 keyboard. On a daily basis, I use a Mac II extended, NeXT, Sun-3, IBM P70-386 portable keyboard and the new Sun keyboard, so moving from one kind of keyboard to another is common for me. The new Sun keyboard is clearly better than some of these others so any keyboard discussion is a relative one. The new keyboard may not be as nice for some people, but it is certainly much better than others. I had a chance to run on a DECstation 3100 and found the keyboard there to be so different from the keyboards above that I made more typing mistakes than I had in years. The person who used it after me had the same problem. Like so many other things in the workstation market, the nature of the keyboard is a matter of "religion" and familiarity rather than true functionality in most cases. [At same session I was playing with the DECstation, I got into a disagreement with the others around me on "mice". We uniformly hated the DEC mechanical mouse, but some stated they love the Mac and NeXT mechanical mice whereas I like the Sun optical mouse best.] As with the PC market, it seems reasonable to have a third party company make alternative Sun keyboards to satisfy those people who dislike the new keyboards. Steve Christensen NCSA, University of Illinois steve@ncsa.uiuc.edu