In the last blog post I mentioned that the weekly “CNET to the Rescue” podcast was going to review the daskeyboard.
Without further ado – you can now view Rafe and Josh talk keyboards.
Also, you won’t have to wait long to hear what they have to say regarding the daskeyboard – the daskeyboard discussion begins at about the 2 minute and 45 second point.
Enjoy……
Well, I Just started with Metadot (daskeyboard) and wanted to share my continuing saga using the Das Keyboard. To be blunt, my typing skills are dismal – I thought that I could type with a little speed, but in reality the mistakes that I make slow me down considerably. Interestingly, I always thought that I should be a good typist, having played classical piano for many years.
My Quest?
To learn to type the right way and achieve 60 words per minute. Actually, the bigger goal is to beat Daniel in a race – http://app.typrx.com/#. This won’t be easy to achieve before the end of August but it should be fun to try.
The Tools:
To achieve these lofty goals, I will be using the Ultimate daskeyboard (self described as “Bad ass”) and a Mavis Beacon typing DVD.
The Baseline:
Since I never learned to type, I am starting at the bottom – reflected in my first score on the typing race. 
I completed the race with my fingers in the proper typing position.I also used the daskeyboard (blank keys).
I did score 23 wpm with my laptop banging away without proper finger positions.
My odyssey is just beginning and I look forward to sharing my lows as well as my triumphs for your reading pleasure.
See you soon
Dre
Thanks to everyone who entered our contest to win an iPad. We enjoyed reading about your experience using Das Keyboard, how it has improved your typing and speed, and how many of you simply enjoy typing on it for the tactile feedback and “click.”
Our very scientific approach to selecting a winner was to drop everyone’s name in a trash can (unused!) and blindly select a name with an impartial witness to make sure the process was legit. (The use of a trash can is simply because no one in the office had a hat. It does not reflect our opinion of the contestants, because we love our fans!)
And now for the big reveal. The winner is…Bob Tregilus!
Here is what he said (among other things) about Das Keyboard:
“Hi Das Keyboard -
I love the positive feedback from each keystroke on my Das Keyboard -
it’s tactile typing on my Linux box at it’s best! Just like shutting the door of a Rolls Royce, that solid and firm response cuts down on this old mechanic’s flat-fingered typing mistakes.
Thanks for a top-of-line and easy to clean product!”
Congratulations to Bob, and thanks again to everyone who entered. Many t-shirts are underway. We hope you continue to enjoy your Das Keyboard experience. Happy typing!
We are happy to launch our revamped website for Das Keyboard along with its new store. The
look and feel is refreshed, more engaging and the site overall is more informative. Access to tech support is easier due to a seamless integration with our helpdesk service. The store is based on the Amazon Seller Central service for a safe, secure and reliable buying experience while Montastic monitors our website and emails us in case its down.
It took us longer than expected to nail the technical details but, thanks to the Amazon Seller Central team for they help, we are now ready.
The iPad contest – for our customers only – was supposed to start with the launch of our new website and store. So here we are. We pushed its end to May 31.
We’ll hope you’ll enjoy our new web experience.
The General posted an article on geekhack on how to mod Das Keyboard with one Fn key and one Win key to become a 2-win key, getting rid of the Fn key altogether. It is pretty straight forward. Thanks to Colin R. for sending us the pointer.
UPDATE: You now have till May 31 to send us your story (*). Our new store is not ready so you’ve got more time!
As we are preparing to launch our revamped website, we are looking for customer testimonials that will make an impact on our site visitors. If you blog or Facebook about your Das Keyboard experience, send us a link to iwantgoodies@daskeyboard.com along with a picture of you (just your pretty face is enough).
Choose a topic of your choice, productivity, speed improvement, comfort, typing enjoyment, mojo increase or anything you noticed changing while using Das Keyboard. If your testimonial is great we’ll post it on our website or blog. If it gets posted, you get a t-shirt.
How to get an iPad?
There will be a draw for all t-shirt winners on May 10th 23rd 26th(*). All t-shirt winners will automatically enter the iPad draw.
Results and updates will be announced on this blog.
Good luck.
(*) We postponed the end of the contest due to technical issue that delayed the launch of our new site and store.
From time to time we get pictures from Das Keyboard users showing their desktop setup. Here is one we really like from Lance Hassan. Checkout the recursive background picture.
Also notable: the keyboard is the venerable first generation Das Keyboard that sports weighted keys we launched 5 years ago.
an excerpt from a review Das Keyboard received from ars technica,‘gears and gadgets’ section:
“…This review may have seemed slightly gushing, but it’s hard to apologize for getting excited about a product that hits all of your tastes so perfectly. This is a niche product, for sure; very few people are going to be spending over $100 on a keyboard. Of those, many won’t like the sound that comes from using this sort of keyboard. When you type with a Das Keyboard though, you look like you’re using a prop from Blade Runner, and you feel like you’re writing something with weight, even if you’re simply arguing on an Internet forum.
We told the people behind Das Keyboard that we were going to put the product through its paces for a long time before writing up our impressions, but they had the last laugh; now we can’t imagine typing on anything else. When they ask for our review sample back, they may get our debit number instead.”
thanks ars technica!
Apple keyboards are really great looking. They have little chicklets keys going for them. They look great on your desk. But do they get the job done? Check out what keyboard sunstreaker84 would choose if he was trapped in a post-apocalyptic world and had to survive using his wits and computing skills alone.
So do you want to know more about the two individuals who will be competing for the right to be named the first ever Ultimate Typing Champion? Here’s a brief snapshot of our two UTC finalists – Sean Wrona and Nate Bowen. They’ll compete in-person, mano-a-mano during the upcoming SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Meet Sean and Nate, two guys with really fast fingers on a keyboard!
Sean WronaAge: 25
Hometown: Ithaca, New York
College education: Cornell University; BA Economics, 2007; MPS Applied Statistics, 2008
Occupation: Currently unemployed, but ideally seeking a statistical or programming position.
One of my high school classmates played the “Typing Speed” game on Facebook, causing me to eventually discover the myriad typing tests online. I knew I was a faster typist than any student or teacher in my high school, but did not know I held up nationally until learning that I was frequently 20-30 wpm faster than all but a handful of other players there. Upon realizing this, I eventually decided to participate in the UTC, especially after I lost my job.
My mom has been disabled with multiple sclerosis since before I was born, so I spent a lot more time indoors than other kids. My parents encouraged my computer use from the age of about three-years-old. I discovered an old DOS typing game one of them had installed and practiced there before I was even in grade school. By about age ten I was typing 100 words per minute.
On a short sprint: peak of 195-200 wpm, average of around 165 wpm
On a longer passage: peak of 165-170 wpm, average of around 145-150 wpm
I practice on a number of different typing websites, which have a wide variety of different types of typing tests, and am probably practicing more than I did before the semi-final round.
I like collecting and entering data on just about any subject, most notably exemplified by my website www.race-database.com for which I am attempting to archive the complete history of every major auto racing series; I wrote all code, wrote all text, and entered all data myself. In high school, I was the statistician for the Mensa Scrabble-by-Mail SIG and became one of the top ten players in the group, despite being decades younger than most other members. I am also a member of the North American Scrabble Players’ Association, but although I am friends with several top players in the group, I have not participated in a tournament yet. (Based on tournament players I have played online, I would be ranked around 800th-1000th in North America in Scrabble.) I have also in the past collected data on politics, demographics, music charts (including an Excel spreadsheet of every top ten hit on the Billboard chart, and another listing every gold or platinum-certified album), and many other things.
Field of Dreams, Leap of Faith, The Breakfast Club, Trading Places, Coming to America, Little Shop of Horrors, Shrek, Apollo 13, Wayne’s World, Spellbound
“Hitchhiker’s Trilogy” by Douglas Adams. “Word Freak” by StefanFatsis. “1984″ by George Orwell. “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. “The Seven Storey Mountain” by Thomas Merton. “A Separate Peace” byJohn Knowles. “Bimbos of the Death Sun” by Sharyn McCrumb. “Foundation Trilogy” by Isaac Asimov. “Hackers and Painters” by Paul Graham. Harry Potter 1-4 by J.K. Rowling.
Aerosmith, Beatles, Boston, Cars, Eric Clapton, Cure, Peter Gabriel, Green Day, Don Henley, Billy Joel, Journey, Moody Blues, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, Police, Queen, Queensryche, R.E.M., Rush, U2, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Who, XTC
I use PCs, but I’m not the sort of person to pick fights about favorite operating systems.
I hardly play anything online besides typing games and Scrabble today, but in years past I liked racing simulators and old-school video games like Jumpman and Wizard of Wor. I was never as avid a gamer as most people in my generation though.
Age: 31
City: New York
College Education: None, although I may have earned 3 credits at the Milwaukee School of Engineering studying AI.
Occupation: Web and iPhone developer at Condé Nast Publications
My manager dared me publicly.
I started early. My technique is far from proper touch-typing, but it’s reached a decent pace after 25 years of practice.
I average in the mid-to-high 120s. I lose a lot of time to corrections, so with the right text I occasionally max out above 150.
I’m doing a little practicing on TyprX to keep tabs on my speed, but more important is using the Das Keyboard for daily typing.
Music (listening, performing, producing, DJing, karaoke), reading (fiction, news, social criticism/subversive literature), recreational software development.
Synecdoche, Primer, Brazil, Dr. Strangelove, Kentucky Fried Movie, Angel’s Dance, The Croupier, Paint Your Wagon, and Tron.
Robert Anton Wilson, Milan Kundera, Henry Miller, Proust.
Judging from play count in my current iTunes library: The Beatles, Sondre Lerche, Serge Gainsbourg, Chopin, Ben Godwin, Pernice Brothers, Triptik, Belle and Sebastian, Pauline Croze, Akufen, The Charlatans UK, Meat Beat Manifesto, and miscellaneous house DJ mixes. (For typing practice, though, it’s Orbital, Underworld — basically the “Hackers” soundtrack.)
I happily switched to a Mac a year-and-a-half ago after over 15 years of PCs. Prior to that I was a C64 kind of guy.
I’m a reformed gamer; I think the last game I played avidly was Starcraft.