My Alphagrip has arrived!

Mike at Alphagrip sent me an email to let me know that my Alphagrip was likely to show up at my doorstep today. Sure enough, I saw (from work) on Fedex.com that it arrived at 1:48PM. A few minutes later my wife called.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your geek toy is here."

I could hardly concentrate for the next hour at work. Slowly though, I got sucked back into work. We ended up going out to dinner with some friends, and left the moment I got home from work. We got back and put our son to bed (waaaay past his bedtime) just in time to watch one of our favorite weekly TV shows, Battlestar Galactica. It wasn't until the first commercial break that I remembered that the Alphagrip AG-5 I had been eagerly awaiting for the last 14 months was here!

The package was much smaller than I expected. Actually, I'm not quite sure what I was expecting. It was hard to believe that something with the potential to be so revolutionary could come in such a small nondescript cardboard box. I popped it open, and there it was: the Alphagrip AG-5.

It is exactly the size and shape I expected from the pictures on the website. The feel of the buttons (read: keys) are in between those on a laptop and those on a normal keyboard. The feedback varies slightly between buttons of different sizes, but is remarkably uniform overall considering the variation in shape and size. The trackball is as smooth and precise as a trackball can be.

Aside from the AG-5, the box also contained some brief documentation, a stand for the AG-5, a standard 6' USB cable (flat connector on one side, square on the other), and a set of stickers to put on the front of the device. The stickers show the layout of the rear buttons, so that you don't have to flip the device over to look. These stickers are essential when using the AG-5!

So, I now had a dilemma. The main Windows PC was upstairs, but I didn't want to miss any of Battlestar. I then recalled that the AG-5 shouldn't require drivers in most operating systems, since it just shows up as a standard keyboard and mouse. I grabbed my Linux laptop (Gentoo, for those that care) during the next commercial break, and plugged the Alphagrip in.

I already had the laptop booted, up and was running KDE3 with a few webpages open. It started working instantly. All the keyboard buttons did exactly what the labels said, and the trackball took over mouse duties with no fuss. A quick look at dmesg output showed this:

usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-1:1.0: 4 ports detected
usb 1-1.1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
input: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard [SEJIN AlphaGrip AG5 USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:07.2-1.1
input: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [SEJIN AlphaGrip AG5 USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:07.2-1.1

Beautiful. Awesome. This is what I've been waiting for.

My Initial Reaction
Good: Looks to have delivered everything promised

Bad: Learning how to type on the thing

Ugly: The included stand for the Alphagrip is made of the thinnest, cheapest plastic. It already had several tears in it before I took it out of the box. It isn't pretty, but it does it's job. This isn't a big deal though. If the Alphagrip takes off, and starts selling on a large scale, I predict there will be several manufacturers making a variety of aftermarket carrying cases and stands for the AG-5.

P.S. - My next post will be written with the Alphagrip, and I hope to include some initial numbers (WPM) on typing speed. Expect numbers similar to your grandma attempting Graffiti on a Palm for the first time. I'll get there though, I'm sure of it.