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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

For note taking in meetings, I've sometimes wished that wireless computer keyboards had a note taking mode.

In note taking mode instead of sending your keystrokes to your computer, the keyboard would store them in an internal buffer. Later, you could tell the keyboard to play back the saved keystrokes to the computer, which would look to the computer like they are being typed.

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If you don't mind connecting it to your computer via USB, an AlphaSmart is exactly what you're looking for, and it's from the 90s :)

This is a cool idea! I can see it being totally feasible and definitely useful as a piece of software (not part of your keyboard) toggled by a key combination.

I can imagine that if you aren't a great touch typer, you would run into spelling and formatting errors that would make it fairly unreadable. As you would not be able to address them as you type.

Next time you are in a meeting, try typing with the screen switched off.

Yes, there would be more errors than typing with a screen. But keep in mind that you can look at the keyboard, and that can help a lot. The hardest pat when typing without looking at the screen is correcting errors. I am typing this message looking at the keyboardd, not the screen, and occasionally I miss, but am not usre if I missed one or two keys, and so do not know how to backspace and correct it. Also, a coule times I gor half way into a sentence and wanted to go back a few words, and had no idea how to do it. Still, it would be good enough to provide usable notes.

NOTE: I am now looking at the screen. The part above was typed with my head leaning over the keyboard and looking almost straight down, and has not been edited. I could see some glow from the keyboard at the top of my vision from the bottom of the screen, but all of the text was in the top half, completely out of my vision.

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