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Folding keyboard floppier than slice of sandwich meat

theinquirer.net:ONE OF THE PROBLEMS with interesting looking things you see at shows is that you have a very short time and have no idea what they will do when you get them home. It is easy to demo them in a way that makes them look good.

The URTrend Fold-3000 Foldable Keyboard is one of those things. It looked really good, and when you laid it on something flat, did not feel all that objectionable to type on. Weird, yes, bad, not really, and it comes in fairly bright pastel colors. URTrend sent me a green one to try, and it was a lot of fun.

Let's just start out with saying that this is simply a USB keyboard. Other than the greenish hue and the fact that is floppier than a slice of sandwich meat, it is nothing special. You can fold it up, roll it, bend it and lay it over the cat.



Really, the cat didn’t even seem to mind. Short of going out of your way to hurt it, it seems very hard to damage accidentally. The keyboard, not the katzen.

You can throw it in a suitcase to take with you for laptop use, or toss it in a small drawer. It goes places a big, bulky keyboard would not. One place it should do very well in is slightly nasty environments, ones with high humidity or frequent liquid spills. URTrend says it is liquid resistant, and because there was an obvious amount of air trapped inside the keyboard, I would think that it is more towards water-proof than water-resistant.

So, how does it type? Well, if you put it on a hard, flat surface, fairly well. It will not rival the MS Elite keyboards (See here), or the Logitech Elite (here), but it is acceptable for short term use. For some people, like me for instance, it is better than the 80% size keys on the modern ultra-portable laptops. For such a floppy item, the keys have a noticeable amount of feel and tactile feedback, something I was not expecting.

The downside was that it would occasionally miss a letter, not any fault of the keyboard, I put this down to me. I was just not used to the way the keys needed to be pressed. If I took it with me somewhere in my laptop bag, I would get used to it in no time, and in a couple of days, I would be at nearly my full typing speed.

The most fun I had with it was showing it to people. The puzzled looks on their faces were priceless, and most didn’t believe it was a real working keyboard. Work it did, and I will probably take it along with me on my next trip. Until then, it is not the best keyboard I have used, but much better than some really cheap ones. None of those can beat the wow factor or fold up, and certainly none came in the same colors. Overall, lots of fun, and it works.

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