I was getting frustrated about not being able to read the keys on my Kohjinsha SH8 laptop. I had it imported from Japan and naturally it came with a Japanese keyboard. The writing/marking on the keys was really difficult to read, especially at night, even with the lights on. I was just getting too much eye strain. I had to find a solution.
I went on a hunt through the webby-tubes and found several sites that had what I was looking for. I ended up settling for a set of three templates from Glowing Keyboards. For a US$22 you get three sets of a full keyboard that you just peel off and stick over your keys. The sticker sizes are large enough to cover a standard desktop or laptop keyboard. They even managed to fit over most of the keys on my Kohjinsha. I had to cut some of them to fit the more unusually designed key shapes, but the end result was fantastic. But first a picture to show you the difference between the original keys and a few with the stickers already on. Sorry about the quality but my camera is pretty poor:
Now these keys don’t actually glow on their own accord. They just reflect the ambient light in the room. That’s all you need though as even in pitch dark the stickers get sufficient light from the light produced by the screen. Here’s the finished result. Err, well, almost finished. I see that the Page down sticker isn’t on yet in this photo and I couldn’t decide what sticker to put on the remaining Japanese only key, but you get the idea:
Now, there are a few other companies out there that supply very similar stickers. One is My Glow Keys, but they wouldn’t respond to my email, so they got the ditch quick pronto. As a contrast Glowing-keyboards.com responded immediately tomy enquires. I was asking about delivery to New Zealand as most US site never quote delivery costs to other countries. Likewise, none of them have ever heard of the Post Office and seem to think that Fed-Ex is the ONLY way to shift physical goods.
Another set was from Latkey. Now, I LOVE, absolutely LOVE these keyboard stickers. Especially because they DO have stickers that actually glow in the dark. There are two reasons as to why I chose not to buy. One is that they were more expensive, but most importantly, they only give you a template of the qwertry and number keys and nothing else. If that’s all you require then these would be a great buy:
Compare this to the full set from Glowing Keys:
Lastly, there’s one more reason that I love my new Glowing-Keyboard stickers is that I went from an awkward Japensese keyboard layout to a United States keyboard layout. So much nicer to use. No more struggling to find those damned @ and underscore keys.
So far the stickers have stood up to the test of time and I’m very pleased with my purchase. Highly recommended.
Ana too has used one of the two remaining sticker templates on her laptop. Her keyboard was great and I had no problems reading the keys as they were, but I’m really glad she decided to put those stickers on. It really does make a great difference.
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