The elusive search for an ergonomic keyboard

Do you know where (or if) you can buy ergonomic, or 'split' keyboards in Hong Kong? In particular, I'm thinking of the Acer Future keyboard or the Cherry Ergoplus (The Microsoft Natural Keyboard doesn't count as it's not in the same league.) I phoned Acer, who said Fortress. Ho hum, I thought, and sure enough, Fortress didn't know what I was talking about. They said JOS, who had no idea. JOS said 298 . . . but of course, they don't carry anything remotely legal. Any ideas? DAVID CONIAM Chinese University I have to agree with JOS on this one. 298 is a good bet or Whampoa Internet Zone in Whampoa Gardens, Hunghom. I have seen an Acer Future keyboard there, although I have not come across the Cherry.

Places like 298 and Internet Zone have plenty of pirated software around, but a lot of the brand-name hardware they sell are, at worst, parallel imports. Buy something like the Acer keyboard from there and you will not get the warranty you would if you picked it up from an authorised dealer, but what choice do you have if the dealers do not carry the equipment? The other option is to mail-order it from overseas via the Web. A good site to start at when looking for ergonomic computer equipment is http://engr-www.unl. edu/ee/eeshop/prod.html I need to run a simple DOS Basic program on my PC to access a voltage-measuring interface card. I have DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

Do any of these operating systems come with a Basic interpreter? If not how does one load one? Old DOS versions used to come with Basic interpreters.

Is there any relationship between DOS Basic and Visual Basic. Can I easily convert the program to Visual Basic? I have a Visual Basic Interpreter but don't know how to use it.

EDWARD CHASE Pokfulam Run QBasic, which is present in DOS 6.22. 'Edit' for DOS 6.22 is the QBasic editor.

Visual Basic is a lot more advanced than QBasic. A VB programmer friend tells me that although most QBasic programs will run in VB, you might have to perform some code-tweaking.

He suggests you don't try it without first reading up on VB, starting with some down-to-earth books like the Dummy's Guide To Visual Basic , which he recommends.

A suggestion from reader Richard Carrey to reader Bob Reynolds' question published here recently - regarding reinstalling Windows on his computer without the disks.

Mr Carrey said: 'There is one more thing he could try. Usually computers that come preloaded actually have all the installation disks on the hard disk. He should use FindFile to look for files named *.cab - those are the installation files.

'When he finds the directory they are in he can restart in DOS, change to that directory and run setup. He can't just copy the 20-odd files to floppy disks as the disks need a special format.'