Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by omarish | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

omarish

The majority of complaints here:

- Ergonomics sucks!

- I can't re-map caps lock to be escape, what trash!

- This is so old!

- Too expensive!

- Dell makes cheaper monitors!

- Fingerprint authentication can be hacked.

But what everybody is not considering is:

1. You have to have a Bloomberg keyboard to work in finance. It's not even a question. It's a COGS for anybody who wants to work in finance or trading.

2. Bloomberg chat is Facebook messenger for finance people.

3. If your trading desk is bringing in $10M in profits/year, four Bloomberg terminals are a rounding error.

People who berate Bloomberg and it's tech need to have more empathy and ask why things are the way they are.

View on HN

Bloomberg software is certainly important because of the large ecosystem they created over the years. The keyboard and hardware around is not so. It's just Bloomberg way to advertise themselves using physical presence in every trading desk. It is a disrespect to customers, because if I had to pay I would require that a proper keyboard and hardware be used.

By the way, I have used Bloomberg terminals before with a traditional keyboard, and know that there is nothing special in that keyboard that cannot be done by similar hardware.

I agree with the sentiment in this post personally but I'd be willing to be good money that for the majority of terminal subscribers, adapting to a traditional keyboard would be a complete non-starter. They're kinda trapped but their own success and cannot do any immediate major changes that affect widespread use unfortunately.

They made one thing annoying: without a bloomberg keyboard you have to bring your B-Unit in front of your screen for 2fa instead of plugging it in the keyboard. Except for that, I fully agree with you. I find the bloomberg keyboard to be very heavy and frustrating to use. I returned it when it was delivered to my desk.

Isn't there a standalone USB version of the B-Unit?

Yeah but learning short-cut keys might push out some of the super-duper-lingo-terms that get made up to obfuscate what's going on in high finance, so, the Bloomberg keyboard it shall be! /s

... and there are those of us who work (or have worked) on building it, are long-time HNers, and are always happy to answer questions and clear up FUD. It's a lot easier to have empathy when talking to a person instead of about a company :)

Exactly right. Bank of America alone spends $420m every year on Bloomberg terminal fees.

http://nypost.com/2016/01/14/bank-of-america-set-to-cash-on-...

You don't have to actually run that keyboard to use the terminal.

Edit: It's just a regular USB keyboard for windows apps. Remap away!

And the "terminal" is just software running on your existing PC. The same effect could be achieved by putting stickers on the keycaps of literally any keyboard.

And the "PC" doesn't have to be your PC. You can also log in via the website and run the software from OS X, Linux, or an iPad.

Almost, except for the built in fingerprint scanner

Reply on news.ycombinator.com