Hasta La Gadget!

When it comes to making hardware, there are two things Microsoft has always been good at: mice and keyboards. With the SideWinder X4 keyboard, the company can add one more thing to the mix: Kick-ass press releases.

The blurb for the SideWinder starts with the words “Ghost Buster”, and goes on to explain Microsoft’s clever new process to combat ghosting (you see what they did there?) in high-performance gaming keyboards. Not only that, but the explanation is so clear that I can’t really do better. It runs a little long, though, so I’ll just paste an extract:

Most keyboards use a stack of plastic sheets that are printed with silver ink to create a grid of wires underneath the keys. When a key is pressed, a row wire connects to a column wire. This works well when one or 2 keys are pressed, but pressing more can lead to problems. For example, if two keys in the same row are pressed and then a third key is pressed in a different row, but the same column as one of the first two, all of those rows and columns become shorted together. There are actually five different key combinations that produce the same shorted rows and columns! Since there is no way for the system to know which set was pressed, only the first two keys are reported, with the others becoming “ghosts” – unreported key presses.

Pretty good, huh? The new SideWinder uses carbon on these nodes to block the short circuits, and then uses resistive multi-touch to accurately work out which keys you were pressing. This is of course moot for typists, however fast they tap out the text. But for gamers it is the difference between (in-game) life and death. The SideWinder also has macro recording and rather fetching adjustable lights inside.

How much for this high-end machine? Just $60, available soon.

SideWinder X4 [Microsoft. Thanks, Brittany!]