When I was ordering Christmas presents online, I decided to get one or two for myself. One of them was a flexible keyboard, I thought it would come in useful sometime. Today I actually got the chance to install it and play around with it, when I was moving things around in my office.

First off, the windows 2000 machine (laptop) I put it on should have been fine but it went into a feedback loop of trying to install a new driver and asking where it should look for it. I quit out of it, rebooted and it’s fine now. I told it to install the new driver and it’s done it.

Rebooted again and it came to the password and it wouldn’t take it although I typed it on the new keyboard. Not an auspicious start. But, it’s not bad though now I’ve used it a bit. It takes a bit of force to make sure each key is pressed because you don’t get the same sensation of hitting a hard plastic key as it’s just a bit of flexible PVC. Nevertheless you get used to it.

I might use it a bit more, and even debated getting hold of a cheap laptop from somewhere and putting Linux on it and putting the flexi-keyboard on that. We’ll see.

I can see where they’re useful if you’re travelling or you’re in this industry and you need a keyboard that can fold away. Very useful in a pinch, but it does take a little getting used to.

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