it's been almost 20 years since black replaced beige as the most popular color for desktop PCs
but there are still a few companies manufacturing peripherals for computers in beige the most famous
of which is unicomp which is still manufacturing model m mechanical buckling spring keyboards today
but here's another new beige keyboard which claims to be inspired by the model m this is
by a company called perixx and to go with it i also found a new mouse that's beige and it's
made by a company you may not expect in fact it's not even written on the box it comes in
so here is the perixx periboard 106m performance beige keyboard
they also make it in black and white
they claim it was designed in dusseldorf germany value creator whatever that means it's full size
it has a 1.5 meter cable laser printing well i guess they mean the lettering on the keycaps
was done by laser printing although that has nothing to do with a typical desktop laser
printer that they show there 20 million times i guess that's the life cycle of the key switches
more information on the back it's the U.S. performance beige keyboard standard full-size
keyboard durable laser printing keys key press life cycle 20 million times curved keys with
ergonomic support and 1.5 meter durable cable system requirements ibm or compatible pc system
windows xp through 10 this is the usb version they also might offer a ps/2 version although i did not
see that listed on amazon no driver needed it says ibm or compatible i assume it would
also work fine of a mac there's the company's address in germany and it was made in china
the box of the mouse is much less interesting this is the only sticker on it
just giving the model number the serial number and says it was made in china
so here we go opening the box of the keyboard
it's actually packaged the other way around like it showed on the box there's no manufacturer name
or model number printed on the keyboard itself where you would typically expect it up here in
the corner there's nothing and this bezel for the lock lights doesn't have anything on it either
so let's take it out of the box well it does have a little manual in there
periboard 106 m
it
basically says just plug it in and finally here it says the key type is membrane
so it's not a mechanical keyboard it's rubber dome
keyboard 10 million? it said 20 million on the box anyway here's the keyboard itself
one thing i noticed is that although the keyboard is beige
the cable is white there's a slight difference that may not come out that well on camera
it
mostly looks just like a keyboard from the 90s the only giveaway that might be slightly more modern
is of course the windows keys but those became common in the mid 90s but also the euro symbol
do you want to know what the next big thing is going to be
the euro it's already underway so remember a pound will get you
1 euro and 27 cents it's a great number and soon it will be playing right across europe
think euro the change is in your pocket
there might have been a couple of new keyboards that were beige and had the euro symbol but it
was definitely not common also another giveaway it uses the modern windows logo instead of the
more classic wavy style i think also this symbol has been simplified over the years
there's the sticker on the back the part number is ku-3923
you can make the cable come out of either side of these channels here
and it has flip up feet and oh yeah it has rubber feet on the bottom so it won't slide around on you
i like the typing feel it's a classic rubber dome feel but it's nice and solid and the keycaps
themselves are not that noisy so i like it i mean would i prefer to have a mechanical keyboard?
not necessarily i like a good rubber dome keyboard a lot better than i like a bad mechanical keyboard
especially these days there are a lot of bad mechanical keyboards that mostly just make a
lot of noise and once you get beyond that there's no real advantage in typing feel
or typing speed over a good rubber dome keyboard
just one thing that sticks out to me is they made the zero key the darker gray color
when it's supposed to be the beige color that just sticks out it's not correct otherwise they
got the coloring right especially this middle set of function keys of the darker gray color
so it's a typical old-fashioned 1990s style rubber dome beige keyboard
made brand new today in 2021 and it even has a little notch in the
caps lock key so you don't accidentally hit it when you're going for the a key
there's one of the rubber dome key switches
so it's not dome with slider or anything fancy like that just regular rubber dome
and just one thing that's missing is the strong new car smell that
new computer equipment used to have back in the 80s and 90s
it smells oh my word it smells like a new car i'm not even kidding it smells like a new car
due to environmental regulations they've really had to cut down on the amount of outgassing
that the plastic does so it doesn't really have a noticeable smell anymore
so that was the keyboard now how about the mouse it has some user's guides in various languages
and here is the mouse itself and it's made by microsoft you wouldn't expect that but they make
a new beige mouse today they call it white but it's beige it matches this keyboard perfectly
and it even includes a ps/2 adapter so even though it's natively usb you can adapt it to ps/2
so you get your left and right buttons the scroll wheel which also clicks in it
feels pretty good and it's a optical mouse as you would expect these days
it's kind of hard to read the printing on there but it's the microsoft basic
optical mouse version 2.0 usb and ps/2 compatible it's model 1113.
just one thing i noticed about this is that the mouse is very light i think
actually the cable weighs more than mouse itself so they should have added something
in here to weigh it down that's just the one drawback i feel it's very light
so that's the microsoft basic optical beige mouse new in 2021
there's the new beige keyboard and mouse with my old beige compact deskpro EN computer
beige NEC monitor and beige harman kardon speakers
check this out i am watching blog TV on a compaq
freaking deskpro EN that wouldn't be my deskpro now would it? no it's not
so let's turn it on
it's running windows embedded POSready 2009 which was the updated version of windows XP
and it shows that it found the usb keyboard and the mouse is already
working because i have connected through the ps/2 port so that ps/2 adapter works fine
it's a little bit fast but that's typical for modern mice because they use a higher
DPI so i can go into the control panel and slow it down a little bit and that's better
and the keyboard is working too
so here's a quick typing test with the perixx keyboard
other than the mouse being rather light i have no real complaints about either of these
of course the keyboard is no match for model m but you're not paying model m
prices either right now on amazon the keyboard is 34.99 and the mouse is 10.49
so if you're in the market for a new beige keyboard or mouse i can recommend both of these
and as for this old compaq deskpro EN computer i have aureal vortex 2 sound card in it and i
mostly use it for recording audio from analog sources such as records and tapes such as this
recording i made of a tape of WRSU the rutgers university radio station from the late 1970s
this is wrsu fm new brunswick
the house has adopted an auto industry backed proposal to give car manufacturers much more time
good afternoon it's 80 degrees in new brunswick this is the WRSU 3 o'clock report i'm mark nunberg
the house has adopted an auto industry backer proposal to give car manufacturers more time
to meet clean air standards supporters of this measure said president carter's
stricter plan would force automakers to produce less cars efficient less gas
cars efficiently the proposal stretches out the deadlines of the clean air act of 1970
in a way automakers say will let them clean exhaust and still have fuel-efficient cars
a 28-year-old climber scaled the quarter-mile tall sheer face of the manhattan's world trade
center today george willig was only able to say it was a lot of fun before police whisked
him off to book him on charges of trespassing reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct
police are holding a soviet union citizen who hijacked a soviet airline to sweden president
carter signs a nuclear control treaty and answers questions for reporters all right after this
tune in to fm 88.7 on sunday afternoon at 4 p.m.
for the traditional and contemporary sounds of poland on the polish hour
that's the polish hour sunday afternoon at 4 here on wrsu