While a lot of people seem to be perfectly content with using the iPhone’s on-screen virtual keyboard for typing duties, there are still those who would like to see a physical QWERTY keyboard attached for versatility. A company named Ion, which usually makes USB turntables and cassette decks, has now acted to turn this dream of many into a reality.

A new product of theirs called iType can accommodate any iPhone in its special dock and function as a near full-sized physical QWERTY keyboard. And it doesn’t suck off power from the phone’s batteries. In fact, it may even charge the iPhone via the docking solution it uses to connect to it.

Two prototypes of the iType were present at CES 2010, according to Register Hardware, and the company has mentioned that it sees a rough Q2 release date with a £70 (about $112 USD) price tag.

Via Reg Hardware

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John over at Eee-PC.de has modded his Asus Eee PC 1000H. He’s already added more RAM and a touchscreen, along with upgrading the SSD. So what more was left? The keyboard. John has posted of how he’s taken the original keyboard out of the 1000H and replaced it with the keyboard found in the 1000HE Eee PC. He explains that some modifications are needed for the 1000HE keyboard, but it only took 5 minutes to put it together. You can follow his guide with photos of how you can also replace the keyboard on your Asus 1000H.

Eee PC 1000H keyboard replaced with 1000HE is a post from: Eee PC

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One complaint of netbooks, is not of the small screen size, but rather of the tiny keyboard. A 10 inch netbook usually has a keyboard that is quite reasonable to type on, but 7 inch or 8.9 inch netbooks have a smaller keyboard naturally, but this can cause some problems with typing. jkOnTheRun has pointed out, that the butterfly keyboard should be revived for today’s netbooks.

The butterfly keyboard, was previously found on the ThinkPad 701 by IBM. The 701, or as it was also known, the TrackWrite, released in 1995 featured a 10 inch display and would surely fit todays requirements for netbook status. Likewise one complaint of the ThinkPad 701 was the smaller than average keyboard. IBM solved this problem, by releasing the Butterfly keyboard which opened up to a full size keyboard. Lenovo now own the ThinkPad range and possible the patent for the keyboard. Is it something that might be revived? It worked well on the 10 inch sub notebook of the past and could surely work on todays netbooks.

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Members on the Eee User forums have revealed, after testing the theory out, that the new chiclet style keyboards that are fitted on the 1000HE and 1000HA models of Eee PC netbook are actually compatible with the 10″ Eee PC 1000H model and it is entirely possible to upgrade that model to the chiclet keyboard, although the part needed is only available currently in the US and some users are reporting problems such as keys not working. More details are available in the forum thread along with updates on potential issues that may arise.

Asus sell the chiclet keyboard here and it isn’t expensive either, running out at $15 and the install consists of a quick swap of the currently installed keyboard and a few modifications to the new keyboard to fit it to the chassis on your netbook.

via

Chiclet Keyboard Compatible with 10″ Eee PC Netbooks is a post from: Eee PC

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