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I have a Toshiba NB100 netbook which I find very useful, only inconvenience being that the keyboard letters are not high contrast with their black background, the letter colour is off-grey.

Keyboard is not backlit so wondered if I could get fluorescent letter stickers that would absorb light in normal conditions so that they would glow at night time, in dim conditions (well thats what fluorescent does, by definition).

Looked on ebay but not found anything, except for slightly promising range but Russian/Cyrillic character set.

Thoughts?

tempy
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therobyouknow
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    Did you try "glowing"? – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Dec 10 '10 at 16:31
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    what Ignacio said...first hit gives me http://www.myglowkeys.com/ – Shinrai Dec 10 '10 at 16:59
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    Wow - never seen those before. I don't fancy the thought of sticking all those on - nor the expectation that they will stay in place?! I was going to suggest a USB-powered LED lamp. – Linker3000 Dec 10 '10 at 17:41
  • Actually by definition, fluorescent emits light or energy at a different wavelength than the energy absorbed, ie visible light when exposed to UV. It doesn't necessarily glow in dim conditions if there are no energy sources present. – sound2man Dec 10 '10 at 17:49
  • +1 @ Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams search gave: http://www.myglowkeys.com/faq.php – therobyouknow Dec 12 '10 at 01:04
  • @Linker3000 USB lamp is a good idea too, tried one that looked reputable but it appeared to overload the USB socket as Windows speech bubble reported device overloading USB socket. Recommendations about USB lamps that don't overload USB power are most welcome. – therobyouknow Dec 12 '10 at 01:10
  • be aware that fluorescent materials that light up in the dark with the absorbed light might be radioactive (a bit) and wouldn't like to be touching that frequently (Actinium, Radium, Tritium, Uranium, etc) – CSᵠ Jan 02 '13 at 21:49

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Thinkgeek has a set of stickers that pick up even the dimmest ambient light to add a glow:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/keyboards-mice/d77d/

kweerious
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  • Looks like the best thing out there. Also http://www.myglowkeys.com/faq.php I think these work from the same principle of high reflectivity; neither solution stores the light energy to re-emit it in dark conditions. This high reflectivity is probably good enough from me, given that the light from the notebook screen will shine on the high reflective keys. – therobyouknow Dec 12 '10 at 01:03