Re: Northgate Keyboards

[Pam Upton upton1@xxxxxxxx]

As an unreconstructed and unrepentant lefthand function key fanatic, I've
transferred my old Northgate keyboard (seven years and counting) through
two computer upgrades since the old Northgate 386SX that the keyboard
originally came with. I'm a lefty and a touch-typist, and there's just
no other function-key arrangement that makes sense as far as I'm
concerned. I'm glad to hear that Northgate keyboards apparently are
still available--someone recently told me they thought the company
might be out of business--but disturbed by the news that they may no
longer be as good as the one I have). It's also great that there are a
couple of other options in the Gateway and Pro-KEY keyboards. At least one
local computer store told me no one was making lefthand F keys anymore.

Many thanks to the person who posted the address and phone #s for
Northgate. Could someone do the same for Gateway and MaxiSwitch (ProKEY)?
And what does the ProKEY sell for these days?

-------------------------
Pam Upton
Assistant Managing Editor
Univ. of N.C. Press
upton1@xxxxxxxx
-------------------------


On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Harry Binswanger wrote:

>
> At 08:27 PM 2/20/97 -0500, you wrote:
> >Just curious - (Never hear about Northgate nowadays)
> >How many of you out there use a Northgate keyboard?
> >
> >
> I used to use them until the last one broke and then I bought MaxiSwitch
> ProKEY 124 because it is fully programmable--it can assign a macro to a key,
> and all macro's can be turned off/on with a keystroke (though an awkward one
> to reach). It's very helpful if you switch back and forth from Xy's .kbd to
> W95--you program the required windows keystrokes to your usual Xy keys.
> E.g., dating from Wordstar days, I use ctrl-Y to delete the line the cursor
> is on. Simple to make Xy's .kbd do that, but then Windows has a different,
> multi-key sequence required to do that, so I program that sequence onto
> ctrl-Y as a macro. And the keyboards hold their programming when power is off.
>
> >Count me in. God designed the function keys on the left-hand side, and for
> >a long time after Man unilaterally changed that design, I found it really
> >hard to cope with my clients' keyboards!
>
> I agree! and the ProKEY 124 has BOTH the left-hand function keys AND the
> ones at the top (which can then be set to be shifted function keys,
macro's, > or whatever).
>
> Regards,
>
> Harry Binswanger
> hb@xxxxxxxx
>