Interesting bug with the Das Keyboard

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

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We reviewed the Das Keyboard during our keyboard roundup back in the day, and I don’t think I ran into this problem. Blogger Barney has found an interesting bug: when keys are pressed in rapid succession on his Das Keyboard, the letters always show up on the screen as if he’d pressed the leftmost keys first, then the ones on the right. He even made a special little tool to test and show this, as any truly scientifically-minded and gadget-oriented person would.

My immediate suspicion is that it has to do with the speed at which the USB connection is polled: if you press two keys down within the time it takes it to pull information from the whole keyboard, it’ll order those keys left-to-right instead of in the order you pressed them. The Das is supposed to have enough key rollover that inversion shouldn’t be a problem, but who knows?

If that’s the case, it’d be easy enough to fix. I don’t have the Das Keyboard any more, any DK owners out there want to weigh in? I found it to be a pretty good keyboard and didn’t encounter this issue, but hopefully if we cause a ruckus, the Das Keyboard guys will fix it.

[via Reddit, where they're picking it apart as I type this]

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