Hi, I know this isn't entirely on-topic but I figured I may as well try asking
here since even though the WP-2 isn't really part of the m100 family, there is
a bit of an overlap and some people here may have some experience with them.
I bought a WP-2 a while back because I was curious, and it was cheap. I
thought it might be a nicer thing to do my blog/diary and to take meetings
notes on than my m100, since it is thinner and lighter and has an 80-column
display, and I'd heard the keyboard was quieter.
Turns out I'm less thrilled with it than I had hoped I'd be, but that's not why
I'm writing here. I'm having a problem with the keyboard and I'm not sure if
the problem I'm having is a fault with my unit's keyboard hardware itself, or
with the design of the machine.
I keep getting errant keystrokes when I type, mostly when I type fast. The
errant keystrokes are repeatable, for instance if I type a word ending in 'ing'
I will get a word ending in 'ing7'. If I type 'ing' at slow or moderate speeds
it's fine, but if I type 'ing' quickly I get 'ing7'.
I tried some extensive high-speed typing last night and I ended up with equals
signs and other spurious characters in the middle of some words, but in
predictable places (like in the same spot in the same word each time that word
is used). Also, the cursor would periodically jump up one line even though I
swear my hands are nowhere near hitting the cursor keys, and I'd look at the
screen to find I'd been inserting text in the middle of the line prior to the
end of the document.
I'm not sure if this is a design problem and I'm just typing faster than the
keyboard hardware can handle, because if I type slowly things seem to be fine,
and the keys for the spurious characters don't seem oversensitive (the 7, for
instance, requires the same amount of travel to produce a 7 as the 5 or 6 do),
so I don't think it's a bounce problem resulting from movement of the machine
when I type fast...
Has anyone else run into this before?
I should note that I'm a little disappointed with the WP-2 anyways and will
probably only use it for notetaking in situations where noise is critical, in
which case I've found that I have to type more slowly than I'd like in order to
keep the noise down (which should help with these keyboard issues). My
disappointment is mostly related to personal preference, because I'm a fairly
fast typist and I prefer a keyboard with a solid tactile feel. To put this in
perspective, I really like typing on the m100 keyboard, but don't really like
the t200 keyboard because it is softer (which I'm told is the same as the t102
keyboard, and which it sounds like many people actually prefer over the m100
keyboard).
My work machine has a Model M keyboard which is only about a year away from
having outlasted my marriage by a factor of 3x. :)
jim
