Duo Keyboard, battery and screen.

[Marc Sira]

> I'm thinking about buying a Duo 280c as a cheap, lightweight machine for the
> road.
> One thing I'm wary of though, is the keyboard. From what I've read, it
> sounds like either the feel is compromised, and/or they are prone to
> failure. Is this true?

Both - the feel is basically poor, and the response will always deteriorate
over time. The latest revision (from the 2300c) is better, but still not
generally great. The one I'm typing on (a 280) is about dead, for instance,
meaning it's either time to once again laboriously take it apart and clean it
for a moderate, temporary improvement, or attach a microdock with an external
keyboard (which is obviously inconvenient). You can replace the keyboard with
a newer better revision if you can find one, but it's just never going to
be nearly as nice as that on a 500 or 1400 series Powerbook. But the
revision F ones do at least take a lot longer to worsen.

If you can find a Duo around before buying, simply try it. Look especially
at the space bar, which will be terribly frustrating (and RSI-inducing) if
it doesn't work well.

> Also, what sort of battery life can I expect? Is it possible to re-cell
> them?

None, but yes. This has been very well addressed here - there are searchable
archives of the list where you can find all the gory details.

> One other thing I've been reading about is the tendency of Duo screens to
> start going dark around the edges with age. If I was to buy a 280c, what
> would be my chances of running into this problem down the road?

I haven't seen this problem on any colour screens, though the older ones
do tend to dim overall - probably from the slow deterioration of the backlight.
The corner darkening issue only seems to affect monochrome active matrix
screens like the 280, 250, and probably 540. That said the machine I'm
looking at has a fairly advanced case of it and it's still not a problem.
You just don't notice it much.

> I'm sort of tossing between the 280c and a 540c...

Well, much as I like Duos, the 540c is simply a better machine if size isn't
an issue.

-- 
Marc Sira		|	toh at victoria.tc.ca
If you can't play with words, what good are they?