Who says a personal computer keyboard can only have 104 keys?
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): Keyboards that allow you to dance with the software are not new. Years ago, I bought an OmniKey keyboard from Northgate that I could set in such a way that the keys would have additional functions to the standard ones. I liked it very much but, unfortunately, it didn't last very long.
Just a few months ago, I talked about HP Brio's keyboard that had all those useful extra rubber buttons on its right side. You just press one of these small buttons and the Internet Explorer jumps onto your screen. Press another, and you can mute the PC speakers.
But have you ever thought that, maybe, the numeric keypad on the right side of your keyboard is a little underutilized? When NumLock is on, the keys are very useful, of course. We all like to enter numbers with these keys. We input telephone and fax numbers with them. The keypad can really feel like a calculator.
On the other hand, when NumLock is off, the keypad is usually wasted (I always set the BIOS up so that the NumLock is turned on every time the PC is started, and it usually stays on until I turn the machine off). How many of you ever use the arrow keys or the PgUp and PgDn keys on the keypad? I'm sure that you, like myself, normally use those navigation keys that are closer to the character keys to move around your document.
Siemens Nixdorf Informationsystem (SNI), the computermaker from Germany, has some interesting ways of using the numeric keypad to enable us to work faster. Courtesy of Steen Mirhoj of SNI, I got the chance to test a preproduction keyboard that has this convenient feature.
QuickDesk
The space-saving keyboard looked like all the other standard keyboards from SNI. A gray, perfect rectangle, it had a distinct feel because it didn't use any of those springs that are commonly found in keyboards made by IBM or Alps. The one I tested was a German version, it had all the Umlauts.
The cable was the first thing to catch my attention. Like all other keyboard cables from this company, it was detachable. Interestingly, it was a straight, round and small cable that looked almost like the mouse cable.
Another distinctive feature of the keyboard was certainly found in its numeric keypad. It didn't have the arrows and the other navigating symbols that you usually find in an ordinary keyboard. Instead, the keys had pictures, such as a calculator, an envelope, a telephone device and a looking glass, on their caps. These were the icons for the programs that you would launch if you pressed the keys.
As I still had a Compaq Pressario test unit at home, I connected this keyboard to it to see how the magic really worked. Everything went smoothly until I tried to install the software that came with the keyboard. It turned out that the software could only be installed on a Siemens Nixdorf computer.
I happened to have a SCENIC Mobile 300, a notebook from the same company, so I connected the keyboard to this notebook and turned it on. This time the software was not rejected, although it didn't install perfectly. The icon in the program's folder didn't work even after I installed the software and restarted Windows 95 twice.
Luckily I noticed a newcomer in the program tray at the bottom of my taskbar. It turned out that the software automatically loaded when I restarted the system. I double-clicked on the new icon, and I got the QuickDesk panel, which you could see in the accompanying picture.
Honestly speaking, up to this point I still didn't know what the keyboard had in store for me. The manual that came with it was very brief, it did not start by explaining what was special about this keyboard. So, after some trial and error, I soon found out what QuickDesk was all about.
HotKeys
The division (slash) key was preset for minimizing the active window, while the multiplication (asterisk) key was preset for maximizing it. The key on the top right hand corner of the keypad, which is actually a minus sign, works like Alt-F4. It will close the active window or application.
The next 11 keys on the keypad can be individually programmed to launch any application. All I had to do was click on the Setting button in the QuickDesk panel. A quicker way would be to drag and drop the program icons from Windows Explorer.
Now, guess which keys should be used to turn the speakers volume up or down? Well, you're right: The Plus key will raise the volume, while the Enter key on the bottom right corner of the keypad will reduce the power of the speakers.
What if we still want to use the numeric keypad to enter numbers? Here the QuickDesk program really shines. Press the Num key to activate NumLock. It will stay on as long as you tap any of the keys. If you don't press any of the number keys in 10 seconds, the light will automatically turn off and the keypad will be back under the control of QuickDesk. It's really neat.