It's somewhat true that using a laptop keyboard isn't the most comfortable typing experience a person can have. The keys are tight, some of them are placed in weird positions and if you like tapping them hard you will damage your notebook after a while.

Sure, you can always attach a regular keyboard to your laptop, but carrying it kind of ruins the entire portability concept. So, Atek have come up with a middle solution which is designed to aid the power typer in achieving his goals, while at the same time still trying to maintain portability for travelers.

It's called the OnBoard Travel Keyboard and comes in the form of a black compact keyboard. This is not one of those flimsy foldable keyboards, which, somehow, are even more difficult to use than most laptop keys.

What the company actually did was to take a regular 104 keys keyboard and ponder: “what can we do to make it more compact, but still not change key size and spacing?” (if you ask me, companies should use this kind of thinking more often).

What they came up with is a decent solution, since the travel keyboard still has 99 out of the total 104 keys usually found on a full QWERTY keyboard. It misses the top right trio composed of “Print Screen, Scroll Lock and Pause Break” and the right hand control and Windows keys (personally, I rarely use those, although I think I'll miss the print screen key). Also, all the edges have been trimmed down so there's no wasted surface.

The keyboard comes with a solid carrying case which fits the device perfectly. There's no wasted space inside the case, and even the USB cable's length was calculated so that it would wraps tightly around the keyboard. As a smart workaround, the company markets the solid case as an optional tilting device. There's also an inflatable palm rest bundled with the package.


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