function keys – obviously!
They’ve been unavailable for quite some time, but Elesar‘s popular keyboards are once again back in stock and available to buy. The devices are all-black, with a row of red function keys, making them quite reminiscent of the BBC Micro’s keyboard.
As well as their general appearance, another nod to the BBC keyboard is that they are robust, mechanical units, with a positive force profile, making them ideal for long sessions at the keyboard. This is thanks to the ‘MX brown’ keyswitch below each key.
As well as those function keys being red, another difference between Elesar’s keyboards and those you can buy elsewhere are the legends on some of the keys – the meaningless to most people ‘SysRq’ doesn’t appear, and nor does ‘Pause’. The two relevant keys bear only the legends those tend to be doubled-up with – ‘Print’ (or ‘Print Screen’) and ‘Break’ respectively, which reflects their more conventional use.
Priced at £69.60 including VAT (£58.00 net) plus carriage, the 105-key, UK layout keyboards feature one other key (geddit) difference for RISC OS users – while you can buy the keyboard with usual Windows flag on the ‘logo’ key, you can also buy one with a cog symbol on that key.
