By Andrew Liszewski
The debate over the superiority of soft vs. hardware keyboards isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon, though with the rise of tablet computing and touchscreen devices over the past few years, it’s become more of an issue for those who prefer to bang away on keys. And it’s those types that the Back-Type keyboard, from a French company called AlphaUi, is targeted towards. It’s designed to attach to the back of smaller 5-7 inch tablets providing a set of 24 keys allowing you to physically type while holding the device, without diminishing its portability. The company claims after just a week you’ll be blasting away 250 characters/minute, and from what I can tell since the keys aren’t labeled you can actually configure the layout any way you want.
Now I have my doubts you’ll ever be reaching QWERTY typing speeds with this thing, but I generally like the idea. Now as to when it will actually be available to consumers is unknown. The company was recently accepting requests for beta testers via their website, so I’m assuming that the hardware has already been finalized. Maybe we’ll see them make an appearance at CES in January?
[ AlphaUi Back-Type ] VIA [ Netbooknews ]
