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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at how Stuff Works, and with me
Speaker 1: I have writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, So today we
Speaker 1: were going to talk about some peripherals for your computer
Speaker 1: add ons, you know, extra things, mice, keyboards, not but
Speaker 1: but not not the kind of you and I use,
Speaker 1: right because we're poor. Yeah, yeah, no, we're talking well,
Speaker 1: in some cases we're talking about extravagantly expensive peripherals, in
Speaker 1: other cases that they're not extravagantly expensive, but they are.
Speaker 1: It's definitely an investment. And if you are not the
Speaker 1: kind of person who would use these sort of things
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, it would definitely be an extravagance. True.
Speaker 1: And you you even mentioned that you have a few
Speaker 1: that aren't even computer related, right, Yes, that's true. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get into those. I guess okay, I thought, I thought.
Speaker 1: I started off with the Granddaddy, the one that made
Speaker 1: the news um when it was on a lot of
Speaker 1: the electronics and gadgets blogs about a year ago, a
Speaker 1: year and a half. Yeah, you might have heard of it. Um,
Speaker 1: this energy keyboard, Yes, about such the heck you say,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, you are right. Um, yes, I did
Speaker 1: write an article on this energy keyboard. Uh. Those guys
Speaker 1: are are pretty cool guys. They did not send me one.
Speaker 1: But well, I mean, when you're talking about a twenty
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollar keyboard, yeah, they aren't really eager on
Speaker 1: sending out test copies even like, oh sure I'll send
Speaker 1: it back. No. Um, but let's let's clear up a
Speaker 1: few things first before we get too involved in this.
Speaker 1: Uh like what exactly? Yeah, with these blogs, when they
Speaker 1: say a twenty dollar keyboard, you know, you just sit
Speaker 1: there and think, who the heck is gonna pay twenty
Speaker 1: eight grand for a keyboard? Well, the the analogy I
Speaker 1: used in the article, which I think is fairly apt,
Speaker 1: is to call you know, if you call this energy
Speaker 1: just a keyboard, it's like calling a Bentley two dollar radio,
Speaker 1: because the Bentley does have a radio in it, right, Um,
Speaker 1: but you're not paying two dollars for the radio. You're
Speaker 1: paying two hut dollars for the Bentley. Um, so you
Speaker 1: can drive the keyboard kind of No, No, not at all. No,
Speaker 1: you're taking the analogy too far. Let's step back a bit.
Speaker 1: The key it's not just a keyboard. It's really a
Speaker 1: media and audio video production center, all in one little
Speaker 1: compact package. And I say little because if you've ever
Speaker 1: been in an audio video studio, like one of the
Speaker 1: really big professional ones, they're huge, and you've you've seen them,
Speaker 1: right of course. Yeah, you're in your career as a
Speaker 1: rock musician. God, you've seen these all the time, right
Speaker 1: of course. Okay, so um, good old Filet and his drums. Um.
Speaker 1: So anyway, and we're not joking, he really and anyway,
Speaker 1: let's move on. So these these studios are rather large.
Speaker 1: They have these big consoles that are all specialized. Well,
Speaker 1: the Synergy keyboard. The one of the purposes for this
Speaker 1: is to kind of replace a lot of that equipment,
Speaker 1: put it all in a very compact package. And the
Speaker 1: way it works is this, every single key on that
Speaker 1: keyboard is really a tiny computer monitor, So the keys
Speaker 1: can display different images based upon what sort of task
Speaker 1: you're doing. If you're just typing regular letter or an
Speaker 1: email or whatever, it could be a quarty keyboard and
Speaker 1: everything just looks the way a normal keyboard would. If
Speaker 1: you go into video editing mode, you'll suddenly have the
Speaker 1: keys will just switch, so keys that you don't need
Speaker 1: they'll disappear, and a new key will appear in its place.
Speaker 1: Because the each key is a little monitor, and so
Speaker 1: you might have things like play and rewind and cut
Speaker 1: and paste and all that kind of stuff, the common
Speaker 1: things you would use. And it has a jog we deal,
Speaker 1: it has its own little LCD screen. So um, it's actually,
Speaker 1: like I said, a full audio visual editing package in
Speaker 1: keyboard format. So let's not you know. That's that's probably
Speaker 1: why most people you know maybe had read that far.
Speaker 1: They're just like, wow, how can a keyboard cost that much? Well,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about replacing an entire studio, which could
Speaker 1: cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's really, comparatively speaking,
Speaker 1: not that expensive. I'm still not gonna be buying one
Speaker 1: anytime soon. I would love to see one in action. Um.
Speaker 1: I keep hoping that I'll I'll run into one at
Speaker 1: a convention or something, just so I can see it
Speaker 1: work in person, But um, yeah, I don't think I'll
Speaker 1: be cracking the bank open to to buy one. When
Speaker 1: I could buy a car, not a Bentley, but a
Speaker 1: car for that same amount. Well, it seems like we've
Speaker 1: come a long way from the video toaster days. You
Speaker 1: have that built into the keyboard itself, right, But we
Speaker 1: are actually going to talk about another uh computer keyboard
Speaker 1: that allows you to display different things keys too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the I believe you're referring to the Optimus Maximus, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: which is a keyboard that dresses and gladiator clothes and
Speaker 1: has a sword and also is more than meets the eye.
Speaker 1: We'll just go ahead across genre that. But it does
Speaker 1: have O. L E. D S or oh lads built
Speaker 1: into this screen and you can actually program the different keys,
Speaker 1: like if you wanted one to be the Firefox key,
Speaker 1: you can make it, you know, put the little Firefox
Speaker 1: logo in there and it will show up on the
Speaker 1: key because it's got a little video screen built into
Speaker 1: it with little led Shi kind of cool. You could
Speaker 1: actually put in animated gifts if you wanted to, so
Speaker 1: you can have a little a little yeah, like Sparkle
Speaker 1: or twirl or whatever. Um. And this was a big
Speaker 1: hit for a while, especially when we kept waiting and
Speaker 1: waiting and yeah, this was one of those that was
Speaker 1: delayed for a really long time. And and there's a
Speaker 1: range of these. That's true, that's true. They a little
Speaker 1: le yeah, and and you can choose how many keys
Speaker 1: actually have this feature. So if you didn't want to
Speaker 1: pay the full one, the the knacked out one, if
Speaker 1: you will, as all of its keys uh in O
Speaker 1: L O L E de form that one's about um.
Speaker 1: But you could get ones the where you're just like, okay,
Speaker 1: well just these four keys have the O L E
Speaker 1: D S or just the just the function keys um,
Speaker 1: and they were less expensive. They're still pretty pretty hefty
Speaker 1: price for a keyboard, but if you wanted to uh
Speaker 1: and and that, you could even have it where you
Speaker 1: could switch out keys eventually. So let's say that you know,
Speaker 1: you bought the keyboard, you got it with the ten
Speaker 1: function keys, and later on you want to upgrade, you
Speaker 1: could do that. UM. Essentially you be paying the balance
Speaker 1: of whatever it was to get to the full keyboard.
Speaker 1: But but it gave you that option. So people who
Speaker 1: just wanted to try it out and see if that's
Speaker 1: what they wanted, and they only wanted to drop, say
Speaker 1: nine hundred dollars, could do that. Again, I don't think
Speaker 1: I'll be buying this keyboard anytime soon. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't want to eat my lunch at my desk
Speaker 1: if I had one of these keyboards. Right, a little expensive.
Speaker 1: And there are other keyboards we could talk about their
Speaker 1: their The gaming community has quite a few because a
Speaker 1: lot of people have the specialized needs, you know, they
Speaker 1: want to be able to fire and have a special control.
Speaker 1: They want to frag you in in a fraction of
Speaker 1: the second that they could with their old keyboards. Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've met you. You you ten year olds out there
Speaker 1: who can snipe me from a mile away, and one
Speaker 1: day you're going to be old and slow like I am.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the two keyboards I was going to talk about,
Speaker 1: just very briefly, there's the the Microsoft Sidewinder X six
Speaker 1: gaming keyboard and then the Steel Series seven G keyboard. Um,
Speaker 1: these are both gaming keyboards. They both can store macros
Speaker 1: so that you can program a series of commands and
Speaker 1: and assign it to a single key and that way,
Speaker 1: you know, you can display your leaked skills by pressing
Speaker 1: one button or another instead of like a series of them. Um.
Speaker 1: The Sidewinders actually kind of interesting from an aesthetic point
Speaker 1: of view, it's back lit with red light. It's red
Speaker 1: light glues from around your keys and uh, the sidewinders
Speaker 1: eighty bucks. The Steel series is a hundred and fifties.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about a much bigger step down in
Speaker 1: price from our others. But then again, we're talking about
Speaker 1: gaining here or not uh not not some special productions, right,
Speaker 1: not a not a big production kind of keyboard. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that that pretty much covers my my area
Speaker 1: of the keyboards. Did you have anything else on those?
Speaker 1: Not on keyboards? On keyboards? Why do you want to
Speaker 1: move on to next? Well, I was going to talk
Speaker 1: about other kinds of peripherals. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of peripherals that you'll find for your computer
Speaker 1: other than the standard mouse keyboard type stuff. Um, a
Speaker 1: lot of the high end and and pricing stuff is
Speaker 1: going to be for gaming now. Um, it's really funny
Speaker 1: when I mentioned the video toaster a few minutes ago.
Speaker 1: I'm longtime listeners will probably remember that every once in a
Speaker 1: a while, throw in the Amiga because that was my
Speaker 1: first computer, and people used to ridicule the Amiga is
Speaker 1: a gaming machine, used to well, the thing was It
Speaker 1: was way before a lot of the other machines had
Speaker 1: full color and had stereo sound, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people would build games for it, which were at that
Speaker 1: time really high end. UM. But of course those same
Speaker 1: people now are buying the five thousand dollar PCs with
Speaker 1: the tricked out water cooled UH processors and the high
Speaker 1: end graphics cards and the you know steering wheels with
Speaker 1: force uh force feedback, and the driving seats where you
Speaker 1: sit down in there, and the exactly with all the
Speaker 1: pedals and stuff, and those those you know, can cost
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars, you know, just as as add ons.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: people are buying in in bulk. But you know, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll just run down and pick one of those up
Speaker 1: one WARLD. I'm just gonna go grab another one. But
Speaker 1: there are other other peripherals too, I mean gaming consoles there.
Speaker 1: I thought of a couple that, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: off the beaten track, because I figured you were going
Speaker 1: to go for the computer e stuff and I was
Speaker 1: thinking about, well, I mean, gaming consoles are a form
Speaker 1: of computers, UM. And I remember a few years ago
Speaker 1: there was a game for Xbox, the first Xbox called
Speaker 1: Steel Battalion. It was actually highly rated. I went and
Speaker 1: and you know, looked up a little information about how
Speaker 1: it had been received. But the big news before it
Speaker 1: came out, I remember, was that it came out with
Speaker 1: this huge console of tan. It's a tank game. Um,
Speaker 1: I think where a Mecca game. I was on the
Speaker 1: impression of his tank on me. You can tell I
Speaker 1: don't own an Xbox anyway. Um, but it came out
Speaker 1: with this this uh big board of controls where you
Speaker 1: could use all sorts of different levers and buttons to
Speaker 1: to uh you know, arm your weapons and move the
Speaker 1: thing around. And it actually had more than forty buttons
Speaker 1: with two joysticks and three foot pedals, which is you know,
Speaker 1: you think about an Xbox game or any console game,
Speaker 1: really they're around fifty bucks, right, fifty Well that pushed
Speaker 1: the price of this game up to two because it
Speaker 1: came with this specialized console, which was one of the
Speaker 1: most expensive games out there. Yeah, and and really it's
Speaker 1: it's expensive for now. Well yeah, but you see them
Speaker 1: a little more often now because you have games like
Speaker 1: rock Band, where you were to buy the full rock
Speaker 1: Band set that's in the that's around that range. It's
Speaker 1: funny you should mention rock band, is it? Yes? And
Speaker 1: uh and also the drummer thing going into this, you
Speaker 1: can see why I'm I'm kind of keen on this thing.
Speaker 1: Um ion Who's booth? I visited at c E S,
Speaker 1: but I didn't see actually this particular peripheral. UM. They've
Speaker 1: come out with a new uh drum set for a
Speaker 1: rock band called the drum Rocker. And it's they actually
Speaker 1: worked with the electronics manufacturer Elasis. They make keyboards and
Speaker 1: electronic percussion and all kinds of uh, you know, electronic instruments. Um.
Speaker 1: And this has four drum pads with a kick drum
Speaker 1: and two symbols, and it's it's actually made of aluminum
Speaker 1: rather than the plastic that you would find in the
Speaker 1: typical rock band kits. So I mean it's it's more robust.
Speaker 1: People are gonna yeah, people are really gonna hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing that. So I didn't have to
Speaker 1: say rock out wait I already did. Um Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: this this is actually a pretty pricey set too. But
Speaker 1: not only do you work over the additional money for
Speaker 1: for this set, you also can buy an additional symbol
Speaker 1: for fifty dollars, or the drum throne, which is what
Speaker 1: we uh call the seat the drummer sits on, and
Speaker 1: I still don't know why. Yeah, it's a stool, but
Speaker 1: we call it the throne. And then you can, if
Speaker 1: you really want, you can actually buy a drum brain,
Speaker 1: which is essentially the computer that goes along with the
Speaker 1: electronic drum set, the Elasis d M five drum brain. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can add that for an additional three sixty so
Speaker 1: you don't have to be playing rock band with it.
Speaker 1: You can actually use them for regular electronic drums, so
Speaker 1: that here, you know, you can just hear the the
Speaker 1: chitching sound every time you add on something else too, right,
Speaker 1: But you know, if you're really into rock band, yeah,
Speaker 1: or if you really really are trying to start up
Speaker 1: that flock of Seagulls cover band, or you need those
Speaker 1: electronic drum sounds. I told you not to mention the
Speaker 1: new wave roots come out, all right, Okay, I see
Speaker 1: your console stuff, and I'm gonna I'm gonna switch back
Speaker 1: over to computers. I'm gonna talk about computer mice just
Speaker 1: really briefly. You want to talk talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit about the Yeah, yeah, so you know your standard
Speaker 1: computer mouse costs maybe between fifteen twenty bucks something like
Speaker 1: that if you want to wireless one and maybe thirty plus.
Speaker 1: There's some there's some more expensive ones out there. There's
Speaker 1: the Space Navigator mouse, which is that really a three
Speaker 1: D mouse um where it looks almost like a paddle
Speaker 1: like on the old Attori you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. You can twist it to
Speaker 1: make it go left or right, and you can tilt
Speaker 1: it to make it zoom in or zoom out. It's
Speaker 1: useful for things like if you're in a CAD program,
Speaker 1: UM architecture program, or Google Earth, you can use zoom
Speaker 1: in and out and and reorient yourself. UM. Not necessarily
Speaker 1: useful for other applications, but it's pretty cool. UM. Then
Speaker 1: there are other things like there's the novent Falcon haptic mouse,
Speaker 1: which it looks really neat. It's got a base unit
Speaker 1: that has some articulated arms that reach out and all
Speaker 1: attached to a small UH sphere, and you hold the
Speaker 1: sphere and you your motions. You you move the sphere
Speaker 1: in three dimensions, so you can move it in and out.
Speaker 1: You can move up and down, left, right, and you
Speaker 1: can in any direction you want, and the articulated arms
Speaker 1: allow you to do that, and your actions are are
Speaker 1: transferred into whatever computer realm you're exploring of that time,
Speaker 1: and there's even haptic feedback there so we can push
Speaker 1: it back against you for certain games and things. Um,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool too. I actually saw one of those
Speaker 1: at c E S. I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: play with it. There was actually a pretty big crowd
Speaker 1: around that. But those those look pretty neat too. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I was really going to go into the grand
Speaker 1: daddy of expensive mouse uh systems here. Um, and it's
Speaker 1: not expensive because of its tech specs. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: the pet says now computer mouse. It is twenty four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for a mouse for a grand less than
Speaker 1: this energy and yet all it does is click And
Speaker 1: it's just a regular mouse, except that's made out of
Speaker 1: eighteen carrot white gold and has fifty nine diamonds in it,
Speaker 1: like like on the on the surface of the mouse.
Speaker 1: And you can have it in either a scattered or
Speaker 1: flower design. I'm hoping that this is a laser not
Speaker 1: at all, so you still have to pull the ball
Speaker 1: out and clean. Yeah, you know, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: made from poor people. No, I mean no, it's but
Speaker 1: it's it's alright, you go breaking news. Though, before you
Speaker 1: can only get in the scatter diamond or the flower
Speaker 1: diamond pattern. Now you can use your you can choose
Speaker 1: your own pattern and even use your initials if you like.
Speaker 1: So if you were holding back because you're like, well
Speaker 1: I don't really like the scatter of the flower, and
Speaker 1: then now you can actually drop that twenty four grand.
Speaker 1: Um it's mainly sold out of the UK. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought that would be a nice little addition. And then
Speaker 1: I was gonna talk also really quickly about monitors. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was looking for monitors to see like what
Speaker 1: would be a really cool, like big high end peripheral,
Speaker 1: I found the enlightened i T seven to zero two
Speaker 1: seventy two inch touch screen. That's huge obviously. Um, it's
Speaker 1: got two different models. There's a three thousand dollar model
Speaker 1: which chooses a light pen that has an infrared tip
Speaker 1: to it. There's an infrared camera that's the screen is
Speaker 1: backlit obviously, so there's an infrared camera on the back
Speaker 1: right next to the light source that can detect where
Speaker 1: the light pin is. Then there's a four thousand dollar
Speaker 1: model that uses cameras mounted on the top of the
Speaker 1: screen to triangulate positions. You can you can use your
Speaker 1: finger on that one, so you would put your finger
Speaker 1: against the screen and the cameras detect where your finger is.
Speaker 1: There's no actual touch screen technology on the screen itself.
Speaker 1: It's all done through visual like optics. So you move
Speaker 1: your finger around and it follows your finger and that's
Speaker 1: how you can change the input. So yeah, if you
Speaker 1: have three or four grand to drop, you can get
Speaker 1: a nice, nice large screen. I don't think our cubicles
Speaker 1: would even allow us seventy two inch screen in them,
Speaker 1: would they? Probably not? Note to self get bigger cubicle. Excellent.
Speaker 1: I was wondering if this is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that we would need if we were going to move
Speaker 1: to the next step of the Minority Report era. You know,
Speaker 1: you start drawing in the air and until you get
Speaker 1: the holographic displays. Yeah, exactly. Boy, those would be cool,
Speaker 1: Yeah they would. I bet they're expensive, probably, I guess
Speaker 1: that would counts a high end peripheral I'm sure, and
Speaker 1: the technology you need to run away from the and
Speaker 1: I think we're getting off track here, maybe here, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe we can wrap this up. Okay, you think, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other high end peripherles out there.
Speaker 1: We didn't even cover sound systems or or other input
Speaker 1: systems like Waycom tablets, which are pretty darn cool too,
Speaker 1: although most of those are pretty affordable. Yeah. There, I
Speaker 1: was looking at a two thou one. Wow. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: but it was really nice. Um. So you can read
Speaker 1: all about these kinds of systems on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com right now. We cover everything from keyboards to
Speaker 1: monitors everything in between. So check out the website learn
Speaker 1: a little bit more about this. Figure out. You're gonna
Speaker 1: drop all that massive cash you got sitting around, and
Speaker 1: we will talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
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