|
Posted by
Boby Crundwell
on April 25, 2001
Input
The Toshiba employs a
Logitech Trackpoint device (nipple), from my previous
experiences, once the user gets used to it, is very easy to
use and provides with a comfortable position. However it is
very hard to use the first few times, and I found myself
loosing the cursor quite a few times. The inclusion of
scroll buttons however is a great bonus, and they come-in
very useful for web browsing, especially considering the
800x600 resolution.
On the FIC we have
the standard “Alps Glidepoint” touchpad, which can be
used straight away, and has near perfect sensitivity. It
didn’t feel quite as good as those on the high end
machines you see in the likes of Dixon´s, it doesn’t have
any scroll capability and you cannot tap it to click or
double click, it is still good enough for light operation
though.
Moving the pointer
all the way around the desktop with this device is a little
time consuming; it is much easier (once you know how) with
the Trackpoint. However, this is a matter of personal taste.
You’ll probably want to add an external mouse via USB,
PS/2 or serial ports on both machines anyway.
We come to the
keyboard. The FIC has a perfect full-sized 86 key layout,
with almost all the keys where you would expect them. The
exceptions are the alt & left windows keys, which get
shifted right because of the Fn key, and the #~, which gets
moved to the top of the keyboard. The space bar remains at a
very good size, the same thing applies to the return and
backspace keys. The number-pad is integrated on the right
side of the keyboard, as it is with the Toshiba, and can be
activated using numlock. The whole unit has little struts
on, like on standard keyboards, and these are great and
further the comfort of typing, or just using the keys for
gaming. I really can’t find any major faults with this
keyboard; it is perfect for both typing and gaming.
On the other hand we
have the less impressive example from Toshiba. The spacebar
is far too short for a start, and the ¬ key (commonly used
for accessing the console in Quake) is moved to the right of
“Alt Gr”. The enter key is shorter, but at least it is
quite wide, and can be used once the user is used to it.
Again, with the windows key, it is moved right over too the
opposite side of the keyboard (top right), but I got used to
it being there. I have never got used to the strange ¬ key
position though.
The context menu
button accompanies the windows key over there, but to be
honest I never use that key anyway so I didn’t notice
anything odd. Unfortunately, on top of this strange layout,
the keyboard itself is far too shallow, and it consequently
if your going to be doing some typing it may slow you down
to start off with. However, for gaming, it is fine, I found
no problems in first person games at least, for anything
else you will probably be better with a game controller
anyway.
One thing I did like
about it however were the Fn shortcuts, which worked very
well once you knew what each one did. There is a great
shortcut to “locking the system”, which basically turns
the machine off quickly, requiring the BIOS password to be
entered for the unit to be reactivated. There are also
shortcuts for on-the-fly power saving switches (in modes),
“sleep” volume (useless), display modes, and activating
the number pad or second set of cursor keys.
The
floppy drive release button is rather small on the FIC, but
is big enough. Otherwise you get a normal floppy drive on
both machines, as well as them both having identical Teac
24x CD drives, which are incredibly efficient for 24x units.
|
