JonMartin would like to poll the collective wisdom and experience of those Slashdot readers who would like to assist him in his quest for his idea of the perfect keyboard. Check out his description and see how well his ideal matches to yours.

rackrent writes: "I'm wondering what others do, both in their workplaces and homes to protect from lightning strikes. One look at Intellicast's lightning page should make us aware how often this must affect computers. Again, just curious as to what everyone does to safeguard their machines against lightning."

Peterpan writes: "ZDNet reports that Infogrames is going to port their classic Atari games to J2ME-enabled mobile devices. The Japanese still are far beyond the rest of the world regarding such devices. BTW Infogrames also wants to become Atari! I have heard that the company has established ties with Amiga Inc, so we may see Atari games for Amiga powered devices!? I would love to see Turrican on a Zaurus PDA, Rainbow Arts where are you?! :)" There's also a BBC story.

Michael Cook writes: "Ars Technica has just posted a follow up to the review of the original Espresso PC (Slashdotted here(1), and here(2)), a review of the new and much-improved Cappuccino PC! It finally has ethernet and now it's truly possible to have a server farm in a bread box!" This is a slightly off-the-wall review of this promising machine, considering (among other things) that the review unit was stolen, but it sure sounds like a worthy non-toy toy.

nilstar writes: "Rogers Cable wants to dump (slow) WebTV and move to linux based boxes to connect all the major appliances in your home: stereo, tv, computer, etc. via broadband using rogers@home in a service called "triple play". Will this really happen after MS invested C$600 in Rogers? Here is the press release. As the article here on the star says: 'Rogers Cable Inc. will begin testing a new service next month that turns all the communications, computing and entertainment devices in a home into a high-speed smorgasbord of interactive experiences."' Why do I bet these would only be useful with one company's cable service?

A reader writes "I've been wanting to get a Linux based handheld, and was trying to decide between an iPaq and a Yopy. This article about the Yopy has pretty well convinced me the iPaq is the way to go, but I'm hoping some /.ers might have some additional insight before I drop a bit of serious cash. I'm a poor student, and can't afford to make a mistake here."

il_seba asks: "We are looking for x86 hardware which could be used to build a stilish/compact WAN router for our LUG. The main requirements, in no precise order, are: small size, fanless operation (low power/low heat CPU + compact flash boot medium), on-board fast ethernet and a single PCI slot. The actual candidates are IGEL thin-clients and ALLWELL STB1030N, although if you have more, we'd appreciate knowing about them. We just need the barebone system, as we'll provide software by ourselves."

Frums writes: "Today is the 50th birthday of the UNIVAC I (UNIversal Automatic Computer), the first commercial computer. It was quite a beast: 16,000 lbs, 5000 vacuum tubes measuring 9 inches by 2 inches, and an amazing 1000 instructions executed per second! The first UNIVAC was sold to the US Census bureau where it revolutionized data storage from them. No longer did they have to use punch cards, UNIVAC supported storage on metal tape! The US Census bureau still maintains a plaque commemorating the computer. It reads "Bureau of the Census dedicated the world's first electronic general purpose data processing computer, UNIVAC I, on June 14, 1951. Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation" Happy Birthday, UNIVAC I!" Wired has a brief story about it.

A reader writes "The Tech Report has an article up discussing a new hardware site. What makes this one special? Well, to paraphrase Die Hard, Ziff-Davis has the "How to build a hardware site" playbook, and they're running it step by step. According to sources cited in the article, this is an ominous development for the future of objective hardware reviews online."

Crizp asks: "I've recently got hold of a Tandberg ErgoStation 15cX, a rather nice little monitor with a built-in "PC" X terminal. It's fan-and-disk-less, so I want to use it as a terminal in my living room, accessing the Linux server for Internet browsing and stuff. I'm quite lost, as I can't find information about this anywhere on the web. So I turn to the huge Slashdot user base, and humbly ask if anyone of you have any information about it. I've also created a website with the info I've found so far, and the 'take a look inside' procedure. It's located here."

Ralph Cottenham writes: "tinytechnews has just put the finishing touches on its first how-to article; a complete MP3 jukebox in your vehicle with a sleek interface provided by the Compaq iPAQ. This article shows you how to use your iPAQ PocketPC to supply your favorite music wherever you go." A lot of the "how-to" work here is accomplished by adding an external hard drive to the iPAQ (running Windows, not GNU/Linux) with Addonics' PocketEX enclosure and an IBM diskdrive, but consideration is also given to various ways to pipe the sound into a car stereo system.

At about the same time, two readers sent in questions about those expensive LCD panels that, if you are not fortunate enough to own one, you are envious of anyone who does (I know I am!). However, these two questions raise some interesting issues which I'm sure those of you looking to buy one, may be asking as soon as you make that purchase. One issue is longevity: how long do those LCD pixels last? Another issue is cost: why don't LCD manufacturers make lower-cost Monochrome LCD screens available for those who don't need to work in full-color glory?

ideaspin writes: "Thomson Multimedia is pushing the adoption of its smart card technology (SmartRight) in all kinds of devices ranging from TVs to PCs and set-top boxes -- basically, anything that might play digital media. Information Week has an article about it as does Webnoize(subscription only). This doesn't smell like something that would survive on the PC and consumers aren't going to be thrilled about the restrictions that such technology will bring -- no recording, limited archivability, no sharing and additional hardware for every viewing device. Interesting thing is that they are trying to convince the government to require the computer industry to adopt such a standard. Along with the copy protection schemes built into portable media and hard drives, this is one of the many ways that they are trying to lock down 'rogue' PC devices."

Dark Paladin writes: "What if Sony and AOL stopped whining about Microsoft's dominance on the desktop/entry into the console market, and actually did something about it? Here's an article from The Gamer's Press about how the Playstation 2 could be used as a killer Linux box, and what might happen to the PC world if it happened." It's the same sort of speculation that leads people to wonder why the X-Box shouldn't be the basis of a fine GNU/Linux machine. (Strangely, it places Linus in Holland as well.)

A not-so Anonymous Coward brings this query to the forefront: "A German company has an adaptor that will allow you to use cheaper IDE drives with SCSI controllers. There is also another company selling RAID enclosures that look LVD but take IDE disks internally. Raptor RAID is the name, but I can't find the actual company's web page. I did find This review. Anyway, how do these things work, and does anyone make adapters so an individual can attach an 80gig IDE disk to their LVD chain and save $500+USD per disk."

The Jake writes: "Here's some mindless link propagation for you, Kuro5hin style. Memepool reports that AuDSL will let you use an old sound card to connect to a subscriber line. "AuDSL is an experimental technology for achieving low-cost leased-line Internet connectivity for homes and small businesses. The acronym AuDSL stands for Audio Digital Subscriber Line. The idea is to replace traditional, expensive leased line modems with software modems running on PCs, connecting the leased line to an ordinary PC sound card. This makes it possible to construct a complete leased line internet gateway entirely from inexpensive commodity PC hardware.""

CryoStasis asks: "A buddy of mine reciently stated that 'You're not a real techie unless you have some weirdo contraption hanging off your parallel port." This comming from a guy who is using his for programing some type of micro-controller (he's being rather secretive about it until he's finished). I've decided to go into a different direction however and currently have an old NES PowerGlove hooked up that I use as a game controller. It works great and brings a whole new dimention into gaming. On the side I'm also looking at getting some kind of mouse script functioning desktop applications, no more mouse for me!. So what about everyone else. Who has something odd/unique hanging out of thier parrellel port?" Call me boring, but the only thing that hangs off of my parallel port is my printer, however I'm sure that there are a few of you out there who put their parallel port to some novel uses. Care to share?

Milo_Mindbender asks: "I'm working on a project that involves flying/moving around in 3d spaces similar to what you would do in an archetectural walkthrough. I'm looking for a good and fairly natural controller for moving around in 6 degrees of 3D space. Something like the old 'Spaceball' would be great, but the company doesn't seem to make them anymore. Has anyone seen anything that works particularly well? Ideally, something that only requires one hand and is fairly easy for the uninitiated to learn to use."

chrisd writes: "Just noticed this article over on Yahoo news. It described a research project that Intel and Stanford university developed that concentrated on next-gen displays. The result? A 22 inch display that displays 9.2 million pixels (they use the odious 'megapixel' descriptor in the article), needs 16 processors and 2 GB of ram to run it and costs $200,000US. So it's a little spendy. This is a big step up from my first 12" amber screen though, that's for sure." Ah, the march of progress ... I'm happy with anything that will help drive down the cost of 17" and 18.1" LCD displays, no matter how indirectly.

Keith Whitsitt writes: "Well the NDA seems to be up on AMD's 760MP chipset, and several hardware sites have a review up. So far Anandtech, 2CPU, SimHQ, and Accelnation all have reviews up of this beast. It sure does look like the 760MP has shaped up to be all we expected it to be and more." Time-on-target hype.