CF-28 keyboard abuse

Hello all, I'm hoping for a little help, and maybe a very simple fix. I recently left my 28 sitting out on my desk charging and my lovely 18 month old daughter figured out how to open it and proceeded to pull all of the little hard gray keyboard keys off along with the little plastic key holders. Now, I have managed to find all the parts and pieces and all the keys are accounted for, Most of them are back in place and secured. However I have about 8-12 that the little plastic holder that attaches the keys down have 1 or more tiny ears broken off of them and they either do not work at all, or hold only half of the key down. I'm hoping that someone could point my in the right direction as to where to get the little holders and avoid replacing the whole keyboard.

 

the keyboard its self is not that hard to replace, and you can get a chicklet type cheap on ebay,

 

i have tried replacing keys, but i just don't have the skills/patience. And for what a keyboard is worth, it just doesn't make good sense. (unless of course it's a black backlit keyboard.. those aren't so easy to come by!)

If you need a replacement standard keyboard, I can hook you up for cheap.

 

Oh man.. I've been looking everywhere for that elusive backlit plastic keyboard that's not $260. I find the rubber one hard to type on.

 

We all find that goofy keyboard a pain in the rear to type on

 

I don't mind it so much, it brings me back to the days of my Atari 400 Back then everybody complained about that keyboard too, but I could type *FAST* on it! Can't type quite so fast on the toughbook keyboard, but since I'm usually only typing 20-30 characters max at a time, it's tolerable. Having it backlit and waterproof is worth the inconvenience to me.

 

I too keep looking around for the backlit non rubber keyboard and man they are hard to find. After reading all the posts on how the rubber one is too hard to type on I am holding off on getting it and waiting to find a non rubber backlit one. There were a few cf-28 ones that were on ebay a month ago or so but i was unsure if the cf-28 non rubber backlit keyboards work on the 29 ok.

 

Long post, but please read!

YES WAIT!!! FOR ME WAIT!!! lol... I bought a rubber one for sick money (I think I spent $250 4 - 5 years ago) for my CF-29 about a year and a half after I got it and I HATED IT... I was in college at the time too so I was typing hundreds of papers, so I sold it for MORE THAN I paid for it lol for like $275 and I bought an emissive one for about $150... I made out on the deal in the end, but it was still a pain in the arse. When I bought my CF-30 I just carried the keyboard over. The "1" key doesn't work the best because something fell on it, so you have to hit it a little harder, but it still works great after about 3 years now!! You can see where their is ware and tear on the keys from using it so much.

On a side note, for the year and a half of using the plain normal keyboard I was still in high school typing papers on it on my CF-29 and their are ware marks like 5 x worse than the emmisive one i've been using for 3 years now, so the emissive keyboards DO hold up better than the standard ones as well.

Whats more, I've seen a TON of 6+ year old CF-28's come through in my day and they ALL had rubber keyboards, and they ALL still worked great, however almost ALL of them had cracked rubber from so much use in the police cars.

 

If I replace the keyboard, can I use any keyboard (rubber,backlite,hard plastic) or are there certain ones based on the current one, and second How do I remove this one. I'm sure this has been answered before)