> -----Original Message-----
> From: M100 [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick
> Shaner
> Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2020 21:18
> To: [email protected]
> Cc: M100 List <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [M100] WP-2
>
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> any report on keyboard quality versus the model t? I really appreciate
> this timely thread because I've been looking at the WP-2 of late.
I bought one to use as a note-taking device, and for that purpose I'd say it
would be fabulous for most people (unfortunately, not for me - see below). The
keyboard isn't as nice to type on as an M100, but it's MUCH quieter and when
taking notes during a meeting or lecture the M100 is just unacceptably noisy.
I love the M100's keyboard and prefer typing on it where noise doesn't matter.
Note that the T102 and T200 both have a softer and quieter keyboard than the
M100, and the WP-2 keyboard is a different design and is a bit softer and
quieter still compared with those two models. They are perfectly usable
keyboards but I don't enjoy typing on them nearly as much as on the M100.
(Full disclosure, I have an IBM Model M keyboard on my work computer and I love
love love it - I would rather give up my firstborn than that keyboard. I guess
I'm a bit of a keyboard snob.)
I also appreciate having a spell check with a large dictionary on-board without
having to have an external device attached. Spell check is slow of course as
the document gets larger, just like with Sardine on the Model T machines... The
screen is a plus and a minus for me - you get 80 columns, but the characters
are tiny, and in poor light it's harder to make out simply because the
characters are smaller.
I added a 128k ramdisk chip to mine which is great feature, since you work on
documents in the 32k on-board ram and can copy them to the ramdisk chip
periodically to make a backup in case you royally mess something up in your
document. You'll still want to backup to a TPDD device of some kind in case
the memory goes b0rk (same solutions you'd use for the M100, except the WP-2
has a PC-standard 9-pin male connector so you need a different but arguably
easier-to-find cable - I'm lucky to have a NADSbox so I just have a slim-line
double-sided 9-pin female adapter to couple it right onto the back of the
WP-2). Speaking of memory b0rk, I did have a situation once where my WP-2
crashed in the middle of a meeting (because I was goofing around and typed a
control character sequence that froze the machine) and I had to use the reset
pinhole on the bottom to recover. It wiped the internal memory but the
contents of the 128k ramdisk remained intact. Whew! I wouldn't necessarily
count on that happening that way in the future, but it saved me quite a loss
that day.
Speaking of memory contents, they're maintained by a CR-something
non-rechargeable lithium coin battery. You can make a spacer (mine is made
from wadded paper) to make a cheap and readily available CR-2032 fit in the
holder instead of tracking down the larger and much more expensive correct
replacement battery.
OK, so back to what I alluded to at the beginning - as mentioned in this thread
already, the WP-2 keyboard has a problem with fast typists. Not all fast
typists, mind you, so if you don't mind spending the money and discovering it
isn't happy with the way you type, go ahead and get one. I was disappointed
because I didn't have any warning ahead of time that this might happen, and
nobody on this mailing list at the time had had a similar experience, so I
bought a second WP-2 assuming mine was just defective - same problem. :(
There's two possibilities I have considered: either the keyboard decoding can't
keep up with typing above a certain speed, or the keyboard decoding is unable
to handle the way I (and others, apparently including C.Magaret) type. I
strongly suspect this second cause based on some tests and study I conducted on
myself. I learned to type on electronic typewriters and computers in high
school, and I studied my technique a little more carefully when I first
discovered this problem with the WP-2 and got my mom to try it. She can blast
away on it about as fast as I do without a single erroneous character
appearing, while I get very specific and very repeatable erroneous characters
when I type certain sequences of characters. What I noticed is that my fingers
are sort of 'chording' the keys (but not an actual chord, more of a rolling
chord), pressing subsequent keys while previous keys are still in the process
of being released, whereas my mom learned to type fast on manual (mechanical)
typewriters as a secretary in the 1950s and types as fast as I do but with very
precise individual keystrokes. Typing as I do would jam up a manual typewriter
at speed, but most electronic keyboards are able to decode the sloppy
keystrokes just fine.
Not the WP-2. Specific sequences of three keystrokes will produce an extra
fourth character. Anything with 'ina' will produce 'ina3', anything with 'ing'
will produce 'ing7', and typing the word 'in' (I-N-space) will produce the
keystrokes I-N-space-CursorUp. This is the worst, because all the rest of the
errors I can fix with search and replace after I'm done, but every time I type
the word 'in' I have to make sure to do it with deliberate individual
keystrokes. Whenever I forget to do so, I look down and see that I've been
inserting everything I typed since the word 'in' in the middle of the line
above where I was typing... :( If I get my mom to type 'ina' or 'ing' or 'in '
as fast as she can over and over, they *always* come out cleanly, whereas if I
type them fast over and over they *always* come out with the extra keystroke.
There are other sequences which produce phantom keystrokes too, and not all of
them introduce the extra character at the end - some put it in the middle of
the sequence. I can't remember them all, so I just pulled out one of my WP-2s
and tried typing random sentences. This made me rediscover one of the worst of
the errors (especially if you are passing the notes on to someone else and
don't catch and fix them first), which is that the sequence 'are' when I type
it fast produces 'arse'. :( :( :(
I still love the WP-2 because it's so thin and light and quiet. If I am making
a concerted effort to be extra quiet and type slower than usual, it's fine. If
I forget and start typing quickly, errors galore.
jim
