Peter H. Granzeau wrote in part: > At 12:34 01/26/2005, Corwin Brust wrote: > >> Johne Cook wrote: >> >>> Finally, I'm interested in things as basic as QWERTY vs Dvorak. >> >> >> He's using an Avant Stellar[1], >> [1]http://cvtinc.com/products/keyboards/stellar.htm > > It looks exactly like my elderly Northgate Omni Key/ULTRA. If it is, > in fact, based on the Northgate design, it is possible to rotate the > Ctrl, Caps Lock, and Alt keys on the left clockwise, and to switch > Ctrl and Alt on the right with a DIP switch--different key caps came > for the Ctrl and Caps Lock, as they are slightly different in size > when moved. A good strong keyboard, but no click and doesn't require > much in the line of finger action, either. Yes. I has two different Omni Key/ULTRAs which I picked up very cheep while working at a Computer Renaissance. When the second one finally broke (spilling soda on keyboards is chronic, for me) I found the Avant Stellar which seemed to have bought the design from Northgate. It was shortly after that that Dad decided he needed a new keyboard and, knowing that his taste in keyboards runs very similar to mine, I passed the information along. There are a few differences worth noting: The Avant does have physical key click. Also, while the Avant does come with extra key-caps (including the extra big Control and smaller Caps Lock keys) it has a flash-rom chip which stores the key layout, and let's you write keyboard macros to the keyboard (fun, for nethack.) The downsides to this latter feature are 1. The software for this is Windows based, so I have to boot back over to the XP side to reprogram the keyboard when I want to change things and 2. I can't pull the trick where I run the keyboard though the dishwasher after a soda incident, anymore. This worked several times with the Northgate product.