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Desktop Keyboard for Laptop Freaks
Cooler Master Q Alloy EAK-US1 keyboard in depth review
Jan 2005
The keyboard is a very important part of my desktop computer, there are even days when I spend 8-10 hours in front of the screen typing text. I have gone through many designs over the years, starting with the no-name keyboards, then I also had the Microsoft type ergonomic keyboards - which I didn't find any better than conventional square designs -, multimedia offerings from Logitech – which made my life quite complicated with the many buttons and the sluggish resource hog drivers from Logitech -, but I had hyper basic stuff from Cherry, too, with the famous micro switches – which may last for ages, but made me so nervous with those continuous little click-click-clicks.
However, I always had this problem when switching between my desktop and laptop, as I had problems to find the right keys, especially cursor keys, like Home, Del, Insert and such. Then I have seen a news flash about this Cooler Master keyboard, it said it has a laptop arrangement, and the same evening I ordered it on-line. When it arrived, I discovered, that my Toshiba has a ‘non-standard’ laptop key arrangement, different from the Cooler Master, and PgUp, PgDn, Insert, Del were all at different places, like the Toshiba had '0' in the bottom row, right to the space bar, while the Q Alloy had it on the top row, in the left corner … so, me, the touch-typist, who can work best on standard layouts, I ended up with two non-standard keyboards. Here it is, my experience with this 'laptop-like desktop keyboard'. On the screen shots, you can also see the Fujitsu Siemens Slimline USB keyboard as a reference, which I purchased a few weeks later.
Installation
The box contained the keyboard itself and nothing else. No PS/2 adapters, no warranty card, no user manuals with the boring ergonomic guidelines, just the keyboard itself. Wow, this is really minimalist packaging. Then they could even save the box, and send it in a plastic bag, 'OEM' like...
Installation is straightforward as there is nothing to install, you plug it in and it works. I was a little afraid of this, as older motherboards had problems with USB keyboards, but my 4 year old Asus TUV4X could deal with it, I could enter the BIOS, and Windows XP also recognized it as a HID USB input device. I like that it comes with a cable and is not wireless – I had just so many problems with wireless stuff: the battery went down, there was always this pairing procedure to do between the mouse and the base station, and often I experienced some kind of lag when left the wireless mouse/keyboard idle for a while. So, I see myself coming back to cable in this wireless age - it is simple and works.
It seems that USB will invade us after all, almost all my equipment works now over USB: my printer, my scanner, my PDA, my photo printer, my pendrive, my external hard drive, my external cd-writer … this means I am in a serious lack of USB ports and I always play this plug-in and out with my devices. The very last soldier of serial is my Siemens S45 mobile phone, but well, it comes from former times, it celebrated its third anniversary this year. However, the PS/2 ports are only used by my mouse and keyboard. So I am really not happy for this, a PS/2 port adapter should have been included. The other problem is the length of the cable, at a mere 1.5 m, it is way too short. In fact, I had to use one of the front panel USB ports – it is just so ugly to connect a keyboard into the front panel of my PC.
Hardware side of things
Although the tilt of the Q Alloy keyboard is non-adjustable, I have found it comfortable to use. When touch-typing, you never lay down your hand on the table or on a wrist-rest, so the lack of the wrist pad was no problem for me. However, at this price tag, I don't understand how they could miss the tilt adjustment, when even the cheapest keyboard has pop-out legs to alter the tilt, and a removable wrist-rest would have been nice. The footprint of the keyboard is very good, it is much shorter compared to full sized desktop keyboards, and there is plenty of space for my mouse on the right.
The Fujitsu Siemens Slimline on the left and the Cooler Master Q Alloy
on the
right.
The Q Alloy is of non-adjustable design.
Although there is an extra num pad on the right compared to laptop keyboards, there are no extra hotkeys for volume up down, mute or for Internet Explorer, which is good news for me. I liked them on former keyboards, but after some time I always stopped using them - some computers had them, others not and it was a better practice to get used to launch stuff from the start menu;, so I have the automatism in my fingers that works universally everywhere. Then, there is no Fn key here either, which would have been nice, as Cooler Master says they tried to mimic laptop layouts with this keyboard. I found that Fn+Up for Page Up, etc. is a nice combination that my fingers liked to find on laptops.
Using the Cooler Master Q Alloy
Typing on the Q Alloy is a mixed bag of experience. It has a very well made spring-mechanism, similar to that found on laptops and which I find very comfortable to use. Key travel is optimal and springs are calibrated for a soft touch when pressed down, altogether I like it a lot. It makes very little noise, this is one of the most silent keyboards I came across - useful when others sleep in the room already or for a library terminal. Overall build quality is also at the positive end, the aluminum casing looks and feels good, and the plastic bottom is also very sturdy, this keyboard is built to last. Surprisingly, it is very light, it is no problem to carry around (but why would I do that?).
Key-mechanism of the Cooler Master Q Alloy.
Key arrangement however is so unfortunate… it tries to follow laptop layouts in a very bad way. First, the Insert key is on the bottom row and Del is in the right top corner, I just couldn't get used to these locations and had to look to position my fingers.
Layout of the Cooler Master Q Alloy. This is a US English style laptop layout.
This is a major drawback, because as a touch typist, all I want to do is to forget about the keyboard and just type as it comes. This cannot be done with this keyboard. What is more, it comes only in an US English style key arrangement, the International English style - with the L-shaped Enter key and the extra key next to the right Shift button - is not available. This is a huge problem, as most non English languages follow the International English arrangement, from French through German to Hungarian. In fact, in any country I could touch-type without problems (I just had to adjust the language settings in Windows to reflect my Hungarian needs) in my life, except in the US.
The Fujitsu Siemens Slimline USB on the top and the Cooler Master Q Alloy
on the bottom. Note the different layout - international English arrangement
(top) and US English arrangement (bottom) - and how sizes compare to each
other. Altough the 2 cm gain in a laptop case is important, it is of no interest
on a desk.
This is a common problem among laptop manufactures, especially when talking about sub-notebooks, that they provide only this US style arrangement, which stops me buying it. I had my Toshiba Portégé 2000 for almost 1.5 years now, but I still could not get used to the difference (see my review on sub-notebook keyboards here).
Finally, after three weeks with the Cooler Master Q Alloy, I decided to replace it with a Fujitsu-Siemens Slimline USB keyboard, which is of a lower build quality, but has the right layout and what is more, was also accessible with Hungarian key captions.
What I liked:
What I did not like:
Conclusions
In summary, the Cooler Master Q Alloy EAK-US1 keyboard excels in build quality, the feel of the keys is exceptional, however the strange layout with the awkward placement of the Delete and Insert keys make it very hard to use. I think keyboards should follow the standard layouts that we are used to, any changes forces you to put extra energy and effort into your typing - therefore I cannot recommend this Cooler Master keyboard. Touch-typing is about programming the standard key locations into your nerves with hard, long lasting work, and anything that differs from that causes trouble. As a result, I think that key arrangements should be as conservative as possible.
My keyboard of choice would look like the following:
I do think these requirements are not so hard to meet, these are just the specs of a plain standard high-quality keyboard. I don't understand, that big names in the keyboard industry, like IBM, famous for its super laptop keyboards, Compaq (now HP), well-known for its industrial-keyboards with card readers and such, or Cherry, the German company with its ever-lasting very high quality keyboards, cannot produce something for us, regular guys, who simply want a high quality, good keyboard. I wish Cooler Master made this same keyboard with a standard desktop layout, I would be immediately a happy customer then.
Links
Last edited on 29-Jan-2006.
(c) Imre Oliver Kozak and @Foxpop.
