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Juicy keys are out, slim Cherrys are in
We've been taking a look at Cherry's new range of keyboards. Yes, you heard right – the company who's existence you forgot about 10 years ago. It's done a full refresh of their consumer equipment, Cherry's first in 3 ½ years.
The company appears to have stagnated in recent years, with Microsoft and Logitech storming away with the vast majority of sales. Cherry is now aiming for third place again, which apparently it also lost, and German headquarters, unsurprisingly, want the European top spot in the long run.
Cherry's new high end keyboards are wireless, but not Bluetooth, low profile and intriguingly come with 'thin' keys that offer just 2.5mm travel.
This is very unusual for a desktop keyboard and comparable to what laptops have. Apparently the short travel means the keys are easier to type on. We shall try and bring a definitive conclusion of the technology shortly.
I have been using the Cherry compact keyboards for years, and they are excellent. That is, until the new G84-4100 came along. This has a fatal and unnecessary design flaw. The space bar is so short that, for a touch-typist, it is in effect unusable. The bar stops under N, so that when the right thumb is used for the space bar, it makes contact instead with Alt Gr. And the ridiculous thing is that the reason the space bar is short is that they wanted to fit in a second Windows key along the bottom rank of keys. My new Cherry keyboard has now gone into the Useless Junk cupboard and in due course it will be thrown out. Fortunately, I have been able to get hold of an unused Cherry keyboard of the old design on the Net. Could Cherry please consider re-issuing the new keyboard with this fault corrected? If the space bar were extended by just one key - that is all that is needed.
Posted by David Fleming | December 12, 2007 9:16 PM
In answer to David Fleming's comment about the G84-4100 keyboard.
This keyboard is available in two model types - 83 or 86 key - with the 86 key keyboard being the one that he has a problem with. This has a shortened space bar due to the inclusion of the 3 additional Windows keys (of which most of the time, are completely useless!), so I would recommend that he searches for the 83 key equivalent - these are still available (believe it or not!) as brand new items from a variety of resellers on the internet. We can't pull these from production as they're still used extensively by our distributors for customers who cannot accept the Windows keyed versions. Part numbers are:
G84-4100LPAGB-0 (White/PS2)
G84-4100LPAGB-2 (Black/PS2)
G84-4100LCAGB-0 (White/Combi)
G84-4100LCAGB-2 (Black/Combi)
Although not all versions may be available from stock, we may be able to get them from the factory.....
Hope this keeps our customers happy, but if there are any queries, we're available in the UK to talk to - just visit the website - www.cherry.co.uk for all the contact details
Robin Bithrey
Technical Sales Support Engineer
Cherry UK
Posted by Robin Bithrey | January 7, 2008 2:27 PM