IBM Bringing Back The Butterfly Keyboard

Computers

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.