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IBM Bringing Back The Butterfly Keyboard
from the drooool dept
Okay. I'll admit it. I was one of the six or seven people in the world who really liked IBM's famous "butterfly keyboard" that expanded as you opened the laptop. Many people hated it, and as screens got bigger, IBM realized that they could fit a pretty complete keyboard on a laptop. Now, however, some researchers at IBM's design labs (which still seems like one of the only places that actually tries to innovate on laptop design) is working on some new models that contain variations on the butterfly keyboard. They're not exactly like the expandable keyboard, but there are clearly some similarities. Of course, these are all just prototypes at this point, so don't expect to see them on the market any time soon. Of course, I'm also drooling over the prototypes they showed last month about laptops with with detachable keyboards and a lifting neck for the screen, that will turn any laptop into what appears to be a desktop machine with a flat panel screen. Should anyone at IBM want to send the prototypes this way for testing, I certainly wouldn't mind.
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Butterfly Construction
I was working at Key Tronic when they were putting IBM's butterfly keyboard into production, and I'm not sure you would still like the board if you knew what they did to get it to work smoothly and reliably. <BG>
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Re: Butterfly Construction
OK. I'll bite. What did IBM do to make it work smoothly and reliably? Frankly, I can't imagine what it could be that would make me sway my opinion.
Also, where are the pics of the new one?
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