A review of the Lofree Digital Calculator. Successfully funded on Kickstarter - www.kickstarter.com/projects/... Available here - www.lofree.co/products/digit-...
I use a TKL at home (as I like to game) but with working from home becoming the norm, have recently invested in one of these as I have to use excel quite a bit. Its great looking little thing but has some terribly glaring issues. 1) Most importantly, the layout is different from a numpad on a standard keyboard - which lends to a not insignificant learning curve if you are used to using a standard full-sized keyboard. 2) Keycaps are flat profile - which makes it a lot harder to rely on just touch. Mechanical keyboards have differential height and sculpting on rows to make it easier to find the right key quickly and without needing to look at your keyboard. Even my crappy laptop keyboard has a bump on the "5" key on the centre to help you find where you are on the numpad. With time, you get used to it but it still is a bother and slows down data analysis/manipulation/entry. Its also a bitch if you ever have to switch back to a normal layout numpad as learning the layout messes up your muscle memory. The weird custom layout and size of the keys also means that you can't just thrown on standard cherry profile or oem keycaps either. 3) It comes with only clicky blue switches, without quieter linear or tactile options. I love clickly switches and (contrary to the given wisdom) even use them for gaming at home, but they are definitely not office friendly - which is a shame for such a portable device. The fact that it is bluetooth means that (unlike most mechanical numpads) you can use them with a laptop without taking up a usb port (which have become as rare as hens teeth on current ultrabooks). Unfortunately its also one of the only bluetooth mechanical numpads out there.
This might be a bit random, but I also just purchased this item (and the dot keyboard!) and I see there are non-numerical alternatives on the calc--page up, page down, arrow keys, delete) but I can't figure out how to use these. Pressing 0/fn only seems to work when using + or - to change the backlight, or the 1/2/3 bluetooth functions... what am I missing??
I did not see this! So, looking into it I see on their Kickstarter page this: "Short press the ‘CALC’ key to switch to calculator mode, and with a short press of ‘NUM’ key, you can switch between Number Pad Mode and Keyboard Mode. Super convenient and versatile." But, testing it in a Word or Excel document I cannot get it to work. I'll try playing around and see if it's a different combination.
@@TheDigitalApothecary Ok, so I've tried this since you pointed it out, and it's not working for me either. When I'm in Finder or anything similar which involves choosing from a vertical list, I get *something* at least, I can jump around a bit, but not in any pattern I can figure out (eg down arrow takes me to the very top, then does nothing for a few presses, then takes me halfway down, then goes up one at a time before stopping again). Part of me thinks it has to do with my computer not understanding the non-numerical keys. I tried turning off the keyboard as well, but that didn't do anything
The Digital Apothecary Here's the reply: "Thanks for purchasing our product. About the Digit Number Pad the Edit key, Our settings should be based on the settings of the MAC system, but the Apple system does not support setting the numeric keypad to up, down, left and right, PgUp and PgDn, Home, Del, Enter. This can only be used on Windows systems."
