Voodoo Blog

[#1]

In my last post I talked about the reasoning and decisions behind the development of the Voodoo Envy 133 instant on feature.  Today, I want to cover another vital part of the user experience: the keyboard.

We made some changes to the Envy 133 keyboard to improve usability as well as reflect the system’s clean and simple style. You’ve probably seen pictures of its clean rectangular shape (if not, we’ve provided one for you).  Achieving those goals required us to make some design choices.  For example placing the power button in the upper right hand corner next to the delete key and removing some redundant keys.  Part of this effort generated the notorious CRTL key (see this CRTL blog post.)

These small changes evoked a surprising amount of praise and criticism (a lot of people worried they would accidentally power down the system when reaching for the ‘delete’ key. Rest assured that it takes a few seconds of pressure to turn it off.)  

The keyboard is probably the most used and taken for granted feature in a notebook. Interestingly, it also has the most colourful history. From the development of QWERTY arrangement by Christopher Sholes to the addition of programmer-friendly keys like Pause/Break, it’s worth reading up on.

But there is an obvious question we should all be asking – are all of these keys actually necessary? When was the last time you used the Pause/Break key? Now that we have snip tools, is the Print Screen button still necessary? Why must we use the ‘fn’ key to access the primary function of the ‘f’ keys?

These types of questions were on our mind – and still are for that matter – when we designed the Envy keyboard. Do you think it’s a subject worth revisiting or do you take the “don’t fix what’s not broken” approach? Fill us in here or over in the Forums.

- Barry (FredFrenzy)

Message Edited by Frosty on 03-27-2009 11:47 AM

[#2]

In many games, the PRNT SCRN button has become the "Screen Shot Button", so it still serves a purpose in that respect.

I only every use the Pause button at post in situations where the unit boots up too damned fast.

[#3]

I've never used the Pause button, but I do occasionally use the print screen button.

I haven't used the Envy keyboard personally as I'm wainting on the refresh to purchase, however I do have large concerns with the current keyboard layout.  As a business person, I would frequently use my Envy for Excel modeling.  Being able to directly access the arrow keys, page up, page down, home, end and delete keys are all crutial for ease of use.  I use an HP Compaq 6910p as my work laptop.  If the Envy's keyboard could contain a similar vertical row of those keys (de, home, pg up, pg dn, end) on the right (though possibly 1/2 size keys to keep overall size down) it would be a HUGE improvement.

[#4]

The Pause Button comes in handy for me a lot as I'm always multi-tasking have music and all types of windows open on my computer