You may know magnetic levitation, or maglev, as one of those weirdly ethereal "future things." One of the technologies that we all collectively know from movies and television but have only figured out a few useful applications for. This year at Computex we saw one of the first big steps to moving maglev into the mainstream – putting them in laptop keyboards.
Much like mechanical keyboards, maglev keys avoid the drawbacks of traditional contact-switch membrane boards. Their resistance can be user-adjusted, and best of all they can fit in an impossibly tiny space. That's the main goal of the push for including maglev tech in modern laptops – the potential for tiny, super-thin laptops that come closer to tablets than even the MacBook Air and its ilk.
CNET reports that some manufacturers have already started placing orders for them with the hopes of having the tech in laptops by the end of this year.
