Rest assured, this site is not going to morph into KeyboardReviews.com or anything of that sort. But this week, the topic does seem worth revisiting, as info about a new, pressure-sensitive prototype from Microsoft is making the rounds.

Nilay Patel writes, “[T]his pressure-sensitive keyboard looks exactly like a normal ‘board, but each key can register up to eight levels of pressure, opening up all kinds of interesting possibilities.” And at least one of them might help writers.

Have you ever grazed a key by accident while trying to hit something else entirely? Once, your humble author did this (possibly brushing multiple keys) and wound up only being able to type right to left (thankfully, a reboot straightened things out).

Anyway, if Microsoft (or an individual owner) programs the pressure-sensitive keyboards to ignore soft touches, you could eliminate a good many typos and accidental keystrokes.

Or, when you’re taking a break from writing to play a game and battle some aliens, it might be that extra-hard input will be interpreted as hitting your spaceship’s boosters, increasing a phaser’s rate of fire, or whatever.

Now it just remains to seen if the keyboard comes to market. And what the price is, of course.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 3:51 pm and is filed under tools. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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