January 25, 2007Gadget of the Month: Laser Virtual Keyboard
Comments (10) I’ll admit it, I’m a gadget freak. Most of my gadgets relate to cameras or computers, but that’s okay, right? 
Anyway, I thought I would start sharing some of my favorite gadgets… whether I own them or not. The first entry in this series is the Laser Virtual Keyboard, offered by the fine folks at thinkgeek.com.
This gadget really looks cool. It’s a “virtual” keyboard made possible by laser + bluetooth technologies. (Anything with lasers has to score high on the gadget coolness scale.) What does it do? Simply put, you set it up so that it projects a keyboard image on a flat surface, then you type on the virtual keyboard. It even has keyboard clicking sounds. 
If your PDA or cellphone is bluetooth-enabled, you can carry around this device and be ready to go in seconds. It has a battery good for about two hours of steady typing, and can capture up to 400 characters a minute. At an average of five letters per word that’s 80 wpm typing, which is fairly quick. The best part? It doesn’t care if your fingers are greasy from eating cheetos … just wipe off your desk and your “keyboard” is clean.
Now I might lose my “gadget freak” status by admitting to the fact that I don’t use a PDA and my cell phone is only used for making phone calls. So I don’t really have a use for this. But if I did, you can be sure it would be near the top of my list of toys to acquire. 
Comments (10)
Very nice, i’ve seen that before
I must admit that that’s pretty cool, although i wouldn’t have any use for it (and my mobile phone doesn’t support bluetooth, as it’s only used for simple SMS and phoning).
Comment by eviL<3 — January 25, 2007 @ 4:37 pm
I saw that thing before. Never typed with it, but it seems really cool. With a bluetooth card, you could probably connect this with your PC…
However, I’m not really comfortable with the “small” keyboards. It’s just that I’m used to this keyboard: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/US/EN,CRID=2166,CONTENTID=10717
It’s the ultimate gaming 1337-ness.
Comment by Ganon_Master — January 25, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
This was a first! When I visited my blog this afternoon I had two real comments and zero in the spam queue.
That is almost worth an entire blog post by itself.
I don’t have a use for this either, as I had mentioned. But it just looked too cool to not talk about.
Comment by dave.rathbun — January 25, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
That’s very interesting.
I’m a happy user of the Palm wireless (IR) keyboard, and I’m not sure how well it would work to use a virtual keyboard in what I think of as a typical mobile setting—restaurants, libraries, motels, briefcase tops, etc. I’m not recalling a lot of smooth, dark surfaces in those kinds of places. And what if my seriously pathetic typing skills only get magnified by a virtual keyboard? I was even more pathetic than usual when using the membrane keyboard of the Atari 400, for example. How embarrassing…
But, the cool factor is definitely there, and if the price difference factor narrows, I might just have to take the thing for a spin.
Comment by SamG — February 1, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
Hi, SamG! Welcome to my blog and thanks for your comment. Nice to see another familiar name from phpbb.com stopping by and wasting time here.
I think part of the allure of gadgets is that they’re not always practical, but they score very high on the “cool” scale. I would think that a briefcase would actually work well as a surface for the virtual keyboard… but does anybody carry a briefcase anymore? It’s all laptop bags… I can’t remember the last time I saw someone actually carrying a briefcase.
As far as the surface, it just has to be flat. Since (I think) everything is done by light sensors, the color of the surface doesn’t matter. I assume that this device works by detecting your fingers crossing the “shadow border” for the “key” and records it accordingly.
Still cool, however it works.
Comment by dave.rathbun — February 1, 2007 @ 11:01 pm
I still carry a briefcase. Never cared for the experience of trying to use a notebook bag as a portable desk.
On the surface color thing, I was thinking more of being able to see the keyboard clearly. But maybe that’s important only to people with truly pathetic typing skills.
Comment by SamG — February 2, 2007 @ 4:57 pm
Now, I have a password set up on my Windows box. Will I be able to replace my keyboard with this unit?
Comment by damnian — June 22, 2007 @ 10:32 am
I would imagine so, but I don’t know for sure. Is there a reason why you think it would not work with a password?
Comment by dave.rathbun — June 25, 2007 @ 9:16 am
I believe the Bluetooth driver isn’t yet loaded when Windows asks for the password.
Comment by damnian — June 25, 2007 @ 3:48 pm
Ah, then yes, that would be a small problem if that is the case!
I have never researched driver loading; I know there are some things that don’t fully “materialize” until a login script is run, but never stopped to think about drivers. I just assumed they would load during the boot process.
Comment by dave.rathbun — June 25, 2007 @ 7:50 pm