Peripherals News - Page 23

France's ministry of culture and communication says it's "nearly impossible to correctly write French" on its current keyboards, and so has teamed up with a standardization group -- AFNOR -- to create a new norm. This summer, that norm will be shown to the public, at which time feedback will be taken and considered for potential further iteration.

Where keyboards in the US and Europe use the QWERTY layout (with rare exception), French keyboards (like the one pictured here) utilize an AZERTY layout and suffer from a lack of standardization, so you'll see all kinds of variations from manufacturer to manufacturer, and what is seen will often be non-intuitive. As a result, what should be simple, nearly effortless actions like typing accented capital letters can be frustrating, obscure, and even impossible, leading to citizens taking liberties with the language and sometimes incorrectly expressing ideas as a result. Recent studies have shown more spelling errors among French students, which some blame at least partly on this keyboard issue.

Curiously, the new standard will be voluntary to manufacturers, the exception being for computers used within the field of public administration.

Intel had a massive area in the main hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES this year. And they had a tremendous amount of technology to show off as well. One of the big things for Intel this year, is that of their Real Sense technology. They're very excited about it and have plenty of design wins to bring it to the masses.

They showed off Razer's new Stargazer camera, having a popular streamer sitting there actually playing live against three others. They showed how the dynamic background removal worked, and we were pleasantly surprised with it's effectiveness.

But there were other uses for Real Sense as well, such as with a gigantic interactive all where you could coax a school of fish into moving by simply using your hands. It was all quite impressive, though perhaps in the way that tech demos sometimes are. I can see the validity of the technology and where it can be useful for interacting with, well, anything. But hopefully companies, museums and even aquariums adopt Real Sense, because it could be another type of revolution that we never knew we needed. Razer is helping to show us that there are uses for the technology aside from 3D modeling your face.

Stated as the "fifth consecutive year that Logitech products have been awarded GOOD DESIGN awards" in a recently issued press release, this peripheral giant has taken home five awards this time around.

Receiving awards for its Wireless Mouse M280, ConferenceCam Connect, Keys-To-Go, Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard K480 and the MX Master Wireless Mouse, Logitech president and CEO Bracken Darrell stated that "these additional design award wins help underscore how design is at the core of what we do at Logitech."

The GOOD DESIGN Awards are presented each year by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and are in partnership with the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies.

CES 2016 - The latest innovations from touch-pad creator Synaptics were shown off at CES this year, and they have a heavy focus on security and in integrating fingerprint sensors further into the PC and gaming markets to let everyone enjoy the ease with which biometric security can allow for.

Biometrics are an interesting technology that's really come into focus recently because of how Apple built a 360 degree fingerprint sensor into the home screen button that allows for using biometrics in an easy way that, mostly, just works. It's a seamless part of the experience, so Synaptics is looking at bringing that to enterprise laptops, so that the strength of biometrics can be an easily integrated daily part of using the device.

Their first generation of integrated finger-print readers is visually embedded into a specific part of the touchpad, and the raised area doesn't take away from the scrolling area either. Just like most modern consumer fingerprint sensors, it's 360 degree readable, so you can place your finger in on it in any direction, and so long as the necessary amount of points can be read, then it'll work. The best part is that it literally saves OEM's money to implement, because they don't have to engineer separate wrist rests with and without a sensor.

CES 2016 - Cooler master is consolidating their business, and that means new products along with that new vision. One of the most anticipated of those is the revamping of their keyboards and mice, from the value Devastator combo all the way up to their top of the line mechanical keyboards.

The Devastator bundle caught on surprisingly well when it was released in 2013. It was cheap, and actually a really decent experience for the money. They're upgrading that to the Devastator II, which should update it significantly while shooting for the same price point.

They've essentially taken a Topre switch and taken out the spring, replacing it with a rubber dome instead. They're calling it a Mem-chanical switch. So it's still a membrane keyboard, but it has the feel of a much more premium keyboard than the price might otherwise suggest. The result is a silent and more sure typing experience. Best of all is that you can customize the keycaps, because standard Cherry keycaps will fit over the switches. It'll of course be bundled with the Devastator II mouse.

CES 2016 - If you're looking for the experience of RGB lighting but aren't interested in dishing out for a mechanical keyboard, Tt eSPORTS has just announced its Challenger Prime RGB membrane gaming combo, featuring a keyboard and mouse package in one box.

The keyboard comes packed with multimedia and macro keys, shortcut keys, poll rate adjustments, Tt eSPORTS control software and RGB lighting. As for the mouse, expect to see a PIXART optical sensor, Omron switches, 3200DPI and a lifetime rating of up to 10 million clicks.

Available for a suggested price of $59.99, the mouse looks quite similar to the original Tt eSPORTS Black, moulded together with the Tt eSPORTS Talon. More information on this combo can be found here.

If you're a huge Pokemon fan, and you own the Nintendo Wii U, you might want to check out the awesome-looking Pokken Tournament Wii U controller from Hori.

Earlier this month, the Pokken Tournament Wii U controller popped up in Japan, and it looked like it was exclusive to the country at first. Well, it will be pushed out to a much wider audience when it launches early next year, with the Pokemon-infused (as Engadget calls it) fighting game controller is on Amazon for a price of $24.99, and a launch date of March 18, 2016.

Hori's Pokken Tournament Wii U controller features the same design of the arcade version of Pokken Tournament, with the "ZL" and "ZR" buttons on its face, instead of around the back on the traditional Wii U controllers from Nintendo.

While the Steam Controller has only been here for around a month, Valve is adding new features into their peripheral. Valve's Steam Controller is now capable of a touch menu, which will let players consolidate their hotkeys to a single interface.

Valve also added gyro support to make leaning easier in shooters, as well as other games. For RTS games, customizable mapping is now capable on the trackpad, which will make scrolling through menus much easier. An improved HUD will help you operate your controller better, with pop-ups now sprouting up on how button presses and other inputs correspond to the game that you're playing at the time.

The community was a big part of these new improvements to the Steam Controller, thanks to a suggestion from a member on the NeoGAF forums. Valve added the mouse-like joystick feature, where it has the accuracy of a mouse to the peripheral, helping manipulate cameras. Steam users are also wanted to see the Steam Controller include the ability to program specific configurations for non-Steam games, something that will be coming soon.

Quoted as "an improved design inspired by the legendary Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1" in a recent press release, QPAD has announced its first new mouse shape in seven years, coming in the form of this DX-20 gaming mouse.

Featuring multi-surface capabilities, the peripheral manufacturer claims that its new model will work on more surfaces than most optical sensors will, utilizing improved sensor technology that so far remains unstated. Inside the shell is an ARM processor and the exterior features RGB LED lighting strips and scroll wheel, with QPAD ensuring to mention that "beneath the exterior razzle-dazzle of the LEDs is a solid, well-tuned mouse with a balanced and professional feel" - making testimony to QPAD's competitive gaming heritage.

With 128kb of on-board memory to store personal profiles and Plug & Play compatibility with any Windows PC, the DX-20 will be showcased at DreamHack and is immediate available for purchase at around $74.

Announced in a recently issued press release, COUGAR's new 450K keyboard sits alongside the freshly-promoted 450M mouse and is compatible with the COUGAR UIX software system.

Set for release early in 2016, this hybrid mechanical switch board aims to offer users a splash-proof design and tactile feedback. While not a true mechanical, this board is released with three LED backlighting options, macros and function remapping capabilities as per all top-tier products.

The main reason this looks quite promising is because of the chunky nature of the design. Reminding us of the 'keyboards of old', COUGAR has done a good job here making a keyboard look chunky without looking like a space abomination - unlike some others. There's no massive flaps and chunks hanging off the side, there's no fake metal bolts and there's no slew of 90 macro keys. For those who like something study, simple and yet a little fancy, I'm quite interested in seeing the reviews that come out of this product, especially looking at how the keys perform when under pressure.