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Hardware Technology

Silent Keyboards for Silent PCs? 87

Posted by Cliff from the well-if-the-mice-can-be-quiet... dept.
Kethinov asks: "Following up on the question asked in this story, I have a similar problem as he did except my late night coding (typing) sessions, not my clicking, seem to generating excess noise for the people I'm living with. I, as he did, checked out this possible solution, but to be honest, I can't type on anything but a standard-layout keyboard. Now, I too can search Google, but just looking at a possible solution doesn't help much. Does anyone on Slashdot have experience in this matter, from which I could better narrow my choices?"
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Silent Keyboards for Silent PCs? More

Silent Keyboards for Silent PCs?

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  • Easy answer. (Score:4, Funny)

    by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:21PM (#7773593) Journal
    IBM Model M!

    • Re:Easy answer. (Score:3, Funny)

      by xneilj ( 15004 )
      LOL :) A few weeks of using a model M around people and they'll think your old keyboard IS quiet after all ;)

    • Re:Easy answer. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mnmn ( 145599 )
      I recently replaced all model M keyboards at home (4 systems) to the newer IBM keyboards that come with netvistas. I was browsing around and found my favorite changed from the old model Ms to the newer IBMs and a few dell keyboards. The newer ones are nice and quite, but the problem stays. To find a truly good keyboard that is also quite is next to impossible. Ive seen the really quite types but I couldnt use them... the keys dont seem to bounce back so easily. Some of them had crappy plastic and was comple
    • Please note everyone that Dell is making false advertisment, their Dell QuietKey keyboards are not really quiet, they're one of the loudest keyboard I have ever used!!!

  • Hmmm... (Score:4, Informative)

    by rastachops ( 543268 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:25PM (#7773615)
    Apple keyboards on the laptops seem to really quiet... I don't know about their desktop ones but maybe someone else could comment?
    • The old black Apple keyboard that came with my old iMac isn't very quiet.

    • Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear@pacbe l l .net> on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:50PM (#7773750) Homepage
      So in that vein, the IceKey [macally.com] from Macally features the same scissor key action as the laptop keyboards.
      • I have an IceKey that I use with an x86 Linux box, and I love it. But the letters wear off the keys pretty quickly. My 'A' is nearly gone and the left Shift key now appears as 'shit' with an extra squiggle. Hmmm, telling perhaps...............

        Nice, and I'm addicted to it, but for $50 at Fry's I'd like to see the keycap letters last a little more than five months.

    • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fulkkari ( 603331 )

      They aren't. Moving your hand/fingers over the keys makes most of the noice, and I have noticed that you can type pretty quitetly with the right technique, but that's nothing like the quietness of the laptop keyboards. Same goes with the Apple mouse. They should be made more silent, even though they are pretty good otherwise.

    • That's true ;) I don't know about their desktop keyboards because it has been a while that I used them :P

  • A noisy keyboard in a soundproof room (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:29PM (#7773639)
    IMHO there is no good "silent" keyboard. At the extreme end of silent you have membrane keyboards, but if you hit more than a few keys an hour you'll become frustrated at the poor usability. Most mushy keyboards make some noise, but are on the very low end of usability. Getting back to the first poster's recommendation of the Model M, that breed of keyboard is the one you want. Put your efforts and mone into soundproofing the computer room.

  • fruit roll-ups (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phoenix Dreamscape ( 205064 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:30PM (#7773646) Homepage
    What about those roll-up keyboards? ThinkGeek sells some, and I even saw one at CompUSA recently. I've never used one, but I assume they're made mostly of rubber. I'm willing to bet those are silent.
    • sure, they are silent, but have you ever typed on one? its like typing on marshmallows.

      Yuck.
    • Those keyboards are absolute hell to type on, if you're typing more than a few characters per hour. Not a solution.

    • Re:fruit roll-ups (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The roll up style membrane keyboards are very quiet. About the same level of noise as drumming your fingertips on your mousepad, at the very most.

      As far as their usability goes, i prefer it to a conventional keyboard, but it is certainly an aquired taste.
      Once you get used to aiming for the contact under the middle of the keys, rather then any part of the actual keys themselves, they actually become quite nice to use. The surface of the keys are soft, and friendly to fingers hitting them. It makes for some
  • There's the membrane-style Atari 400 keyboard, pretty silent unless you count the intentional clicking from the motherboard speaker.

    • Arrrgggg! I learned to type on that. Memories of
      2340 DATA 255,56,78,48,87,165,187,255.255,255,255,255,255

      Now find the errors in the above line. (hint don't try this unless you have at least an hour to dedicate to several hundred lines of the same, otherwise you don't get the feeling of how boring it is, and might be temped to say the problem is obvious)

      Hint 2: the . instead of , should take the longest to find because you should spend most of your time looking for errors in the numbers where most err

  • Paradigm shift (Score:4, Interesting)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:48PM (#7773734) Journal
    The PDA market is the place to look for alternative input methods - there is certainly some development in virtual keyboards.

    Have a look at this. [pcworld.com]

  • Touch Stream Keyboards (Score:5, Informative)

    by fean ( 212516 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:53PM (#7773771) Homepage
    I use the touchstream LT (in fact, typing on it now...)... it has no buttons so it makes no sound.. it takes a while to get used to, but as long as you can touch type now, you'll be able to get the hang of it (it took my girlfriend a couple days to stop hunt n pecking, but it takes a couple months to get up to full speed again...)

    I really like all of the different special things you can do with it, like closing windows, zooming, using it as a mouse, etc...

    anyways, I highly recommend it

  • Virtually indestructible keyboard (Score:5, Informative)

    by Space ( 13455 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @01:54PM (#7773775) Homepage
    There are several membrane only keyboards on the market but most are too mushy. the "Virtually Indestructible Keyboard" [grandtec.com] from Grandtec [grandtec.com] has semi-solid key tops so you know when you have pessed the key far enough unlike others on the mrket that have keycaps as mushy as the sides of the keys. Radio Shack [radioshack.com] and Best Buy [bestbuy.com] have carried then in their stores so take a look. BTW this message was typed on their black USB verion.
    • I saw that keyboard once at a CompUSA, but it was broken.

    • Re:Virtually indestructible keyboard (Score:5, Funny)

      by davey_darling ( 590598 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @04:28PM (#7774541)
      The Virtually Indestructible keyboard comes with a 90 day warranty.
      Hardly instills confidence in the product, does it?

    • Submitter's comment (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kethinov ( 636034 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @04:58PM (#7774737) Homepage Journal
      After having read all of the comments up to this point I'd have to say that the "Virtually Indestructible Keyboard" [grandtec.com] looks like the best option so far. Keyboards have to have feedback; either in a physical push, or a click sound. Since the whole point of this discussion is on ways to eliminate the click sound, the physical push is paramount. You said that this specific virtually silent keyboard solves the problems with others of its type being too mushy. Can you be more specific on how it has physical feedback where others fail?
      • This "Virtually Indestructible Keyboard" has keys that are much like the rubber ones on POS Debit Terminal keypads. That is, they are made completely of rubber with a harder key surface embedded inside.
        It is this hard surface that provides the feedback (imo). Your fingers feel the hard surface, and can tell when they have made contact with the contact pads underneath.
        I would best describe the keypress as having (relatively) high initial resistance, followed by virtually no resistance (the travel of the ke
    • went out and bought one today and within a couple of hours, my hands were hurting so bad that I went back to the old cheap Memorex keyboard I was using.

      I was really hoping it would work out to be a nice keyboard but unfortunately, I was disappointed yet again. As the data point, I have been disappointed by virtually every keyboard I used for one reason or another be it reliability, key pressure, noise, etc. Maltron, kenisis, ms natural have failed my finger tests. They all suck but they all suck in uniq
    • BTW this message was typed on their black USB verion.

      Hmmm... you might want to stay away from this keyboard <g>

  • Try this... (Score:2, Funny)

    by dynoman7 ( 188589 )
    ...close the door.

  • Perfect Solution (Score:4, Funny)

    by cheezus ( 95036 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @02:16PM (#7773883) Homepage
    Get some dictation software and whisper to it.

  • Siemens Virtual Keyboard? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Squideye ( 37826 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @02:32PM (#7773961) Homepage Journal
    Loath to cite Ananova, but there's a "virtual keyboard" [ananova.com] you might be able to look into. Projects light onto a surface, and you type by interrupting the beams.

    From the designer's site: Here [siemens.de]

  • Laptops (Score:2, Informative)

    by nicolas.e ( 715954 )
    I do have a dell lattitude whose keyboard is very silent.
    It also looks like most of the laptops have nice, silent keyboards.

    As of silent keyboards for desktops, the ones that came with dells 2-3 years ago were great, and the one that came with my compaq deskpro 4000 was good too. I guess you can find these quite easily on eBay.

  • My solution (Score:3, Informative)

    by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) * <mrpuffypants@gm a i l . c om> on Saturday December 20, 2003 @03:50PM (#7774301)
    I really don't care much for noisy keyboards either. I picked up one exactly like the one at work: a Dell Quietkey. Sure, it's not *silent* but it has the right 'feel' to it and manages not to wake up my roommate even when i'm coding, and I tend to type like the Hulk:pound, pound, pound...compile error...TOM ANGRY!!!...pound, pound, pound...etc.
    • I'll second the QuietKey. It's not a bad keyboard - laid out exactly how a 104-key should be, and doesn't feel too bad. But, the Model M is the best keyboard for applications where silence is not needed.

  • A different angle... (Score:3, Funny)

    by oobar ( 600154 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @04:21PM (#7774476)
    They make all sorts of various acoustical soundproof enclosures [soundsuckers.com]... Just find one big enough for you and your computer. That way you can type, click, pound, laugh, scream, moan, sigh, cough, burp, and fart as loud as you want without worrying about waking anyone.
  • Just go to your local Best Buy/CompUSA and experiment with the keyboards they have out. You won't find a silent one, but some are much better than other. If you don't pound the keys, some standard keyboards are barely audible (my MS MultiMedia Keyboard is pretty quiet, although I don't recommend it because the F-keys are castrated).

  • change your roommate (Score:4, Funny)

    by ghettoreb ( 711310 ) on Saturday December 20, 2003 @07:14PM (#7775574) Homepage
    to me, there's a clear solution to your problem:

    if you live with a roommate (or gf, etc) who minds the noise you make with your keyboard during late night coding, then the obvious thing to do is to change your roommate or gf, much more so than go with drastic actions like changing your keyboard.

    hope this helps

    • One better... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Get fat
      Take up snoring.

      Pretty soon they'll be praying for the soft patter of little keys at all hours of the night.

      Or there's visual basic, no typing necessary....
  • In all honesty, the only good solution is to type more softly and then to tell your roommates or whoever to deal with it. I have the same problem where I really pound on keyboards. I've done the same thing, and no one ever complains any more. Rubber keyboards and the such are really just crap and impossible to type on. They're just wastes of money. Just use your regular keyboard, as long as it doesn't make those clicking sounds, and force yourself to type more softly. You don't have to pound on the keys fo

  • SUN Type 6 USB (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Very quiet, very good feel and some nice buttons on the left.
    It even works on a regular PC, not just on SUN
  • I will make the same suggestion as I did in the previous story : put your computer in another room ... Or buy ear buds (cotton, wax, etc.)

  • IBM Model M: Loud but eternal (Score:3, Informative)

    by reignbow ( 699038 ) <a.m.steffen@w e b .de> on Saturday December 20, 2003 @09:11PM (#7776233)

    I've got what is probably the least silent keyboard in the world: The good old "Model M" from IBM which has been mentioned several times already. The version I possess was built in 1985, thus being only one year younger than I am. The first 13 years of its history, it served as my father's keyboard at work. Since he's a researcher with a desk job, you can assume heavy usage 9 hours per work day. Five years ago, he brought it home, exposing it to three computer-happy boys by plugging it into the computer in the house. Now, 17 years after it was build, I'm using it, and it's still a mechanical wonder, with unsurpassed feel. On the downside, it is rather loud. But it's nevertheless impressive, considering that no modern keyboard lasts more than a few years, while this one will probably last for as long as computers support PS2 keyboards.

    • I got my model M in 1987, 2yrs old. We've been ever so happy together. We've gone through lots of different computers, but we've stayed constant.

      But yesterday, the b,n, and space keys stopped working. I'd just upgraded my motherboard, so I initially thought I'd blown something. But when I tipped the keyboard, some red wine dripped out of it!

      Imagine! I have this keyboard for 16 yrs, and I go and break it with a careless glass of wine! I'm distraught!
      Ferg

  • CoolMac Keyboard (Score:3, Informative)

    by Drakker ( 89038 ) on Sunday December 21, 2003 @12:39AM (#7777117) Homepage Journal
    http://www.coolmacstuff.com/catalog/?action=Detail s&sku=8

    This is totaly silent. Water resistant, foldable, etc. It's a very good seller where I work, although it has a Mac layout, it will work on a pc (windows and alt key inverted). Contrary to what most review say, I didnt find it hard to use it, you get used to the feeling pretty quickly. The only drawback is that it has no numerical keypad, but no one uses the numerical keypad for coding anyway. The best news is that it's USB, so you can have it connected aside your old clunky ps2 keyboard if you are a PC user. :)

    Since it's in soft plastic, it's totaly silent. I doesn't emit any sound. :)

  • Silent is great but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Sunday December 21, 2003 @01:00AM (#7777209) Journal
    My problem with all the "quiet" keyboards I've seen is that the key's do not spring back to the fingers nearly as fast as a good old $15 piece of junk. I type over 90wpm when I'm not hurrying and this presents a problem for me. It's hard enough even finding a POS keyboard that responds quickly enough that I don't make typo's due to the keys not actuallying being there when my finger is.

    Does anyone else have this problem? Has anyone found a silent AND responsive keyboard?
  • I've been looking the same problem, and I've found that a lot of the harsh noise can be damped by using the keyboard on a soft surface (such as a desk mat) or by sticking soft pads to the keyboard (keyboards often have small pads but they're often inadequate, and the brackets which change the angle are usually bare plastic).

    The noise can also be reduced by changing your style to hit the keys more gently. It takes a little work but often works.

    As for keyboard models, I seem to remember the old Mac keybo

  • iMac keyboards. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 )
    I like the smaller keyboards that came with the older iMacs -- the ones with the half size arrow and function keys. They're nice and quiet, and have a far better key action than any of Apple's newer "Pro" keyboards.

    Then again, I'm among the only people I know who like the way they feel. And I'm definitely the only one I know with huge, ogrish hands who likes typing on them. Anyway, give it a shot.

    (And before anyone asks, they're just regular USB keyboard. They'll work fine on any computer. I have a couple
  • WD-40?
    --
    This sig best viewed with an open mind.
  • "...my late night coding (typing) sessions, not my clicking, seem to generating excess noise ..."

    Sounds like you need non-crunchy chips and non-fizzy soda. Not that hard to come by, at least in my house.
  • I have seen a keyboard that was made from laptop key. very soft and quiet, nice styling, I think it had a Viewsonic logo on it and was pretty cheap (no pun)
  • Coolmaster EAK-US1 Aluminum Keyboard.

    Laptop style mechanisim, good feel. I love it my boss hates it, but it nearly silent.

    Reviews:
    http://www.enscape.net/?id=106
    http:/ /www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articI D=100

    Pruchase:
    http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct Desc.asp?desc ription=23-129-001&DEPA=1&sumit=manufactory&catalo g=63&manufactory=1333

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