Strengths:Microsoft Keyboard durability and functionality.
Weaknesses:WTF am I supposed to do with that thing? It bothers me.The Favorites button is a waste.
Summary:Let me start off by saying I\'m a gamer.
But I don\'t buy into that Zboard or High-Performance crap where they try to sell you a $90 keyboard.
The last keyboard I used was a generic \"Microsoft Multimedia Keyboard 1.0\" from 2001. I used it up until the time I wrote this review. A good 6 years. It was part of a wireless desktop, but I threw the crappy wireless mouse away and got a corded one. The keyboard, I kept, though. Even to the very end it was responsive. It actually didn\'t die on it\'s own, sadly, I spilled coffee in it one fateful day and that was that. I\'d spilt coffee in it about 10 times before and it survived. So, when I went back to replace it, suffice it to say, Microsoft was going to get my money. But what do you pick? Wireless? Bluetooth? USB? PS2? Do you need all these bells and whistles, which keyboard is passable?
For gaming, I don\'t like to use Wireless whatsoever. It\'s just not as responsive, Bluetooth is pretty good, but the regular wireless is generally slower. PS2 is not only old-hat but has its limits. I feel that USB really is the way to go for a gamer, or a serious typist (I type 150+ WPM on average).
That narrowed my feel alot, since there just aren\'t alot of corded keyboards around in massive amounts, there are wireless desktops left and right, up the waszoo.
The 5 buttons can be reprogrammed to do anything. That\'s uber. Unfortunately they\'re too far away to reach during gaming, so you\'ll still have to re-map other keys for that.
THe rest of the keys are pretty standard for multimedia keyboards...they open and close my documents, music, pictures, mail (defaults to outlook express or Hotmail), your default web browser and default messenger program...Calculator, Logoff and sleep. And all the media player ones, skip, back, volume up and down, mute, play/pause/launch default player.
\"Great! That should save me some time!\" You might say, and you\'d be right.
But there are some things that don\'t make sense to me.
First, if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, raise your hand. Good, that\'s probably quite a few of you. By default the lever on this keyboard emulates that mouse scrolling. It usually either zooms you in or out, or scrolls up or down.
Identical Behavior to a scrollwheel mouse. I\'m having a hard time understanding it. Maybe this keyboard is marketed exactly and precisely at people who own mouses without wheels? In a web-browser it zooms in and out as opposed to default scrolling, but I can\'t ever imagine going \"Oh, I wish I could make the text bigger and smaller on demand and have a special lever to do it.\"
Unfortunately, I haven\'t figured out a use for it. Most games interpret it identically to a scroll wheel and that\'s all you can really do but you have to remap both you can\'t have both scroll or zoom in and out of things, one mapped to each. It honestly feels like something they just tacked on a the last minute for no real reason. If this keyboard came with a single joystick to replace a mouse and literally be a singular desktop unit, then I could understand it, as the joystick mouse would have no scroll-wheel. So that just makes no sense to me.
The second problem. There is a button that specifically opens a listing of what the 5 favorite buttons are set to. Why? You could just open the software on the startmenu...I imagine that almost no one will use aforementioned button, because A) these are your favorites, why would you forget and B) would you reallyneed to check them often enough to necessitate an entire button? wtf.
The last thing that makes no sense. You can\'t remap the keyboard\'s sleep button. I don\'t ever hibernate my PC. I turn it off when I won\'t be using it and I turn it on when I want. So I would like to re-map sleep to a favorite program I launch alot, or perhaps even a specific web-page, or even issue it another command.
As far as software goes, it\'s very powerful, aside from not being able to re-map Sleep, you can do most anything with any of the buttons, you can even re-map the F-keys\'s special commands to do what you will if you don\'t use them.
Other than that, it\'s a high quality microsoft keyboard that will be well-used by a college student gamer who\'s pretty demanding. But you can also bet your biscuits that it\'s going to last, and if you can find a use for all the bells, whistles, and frills, it\'s great. I thought they were stupid and pointless at first. Special buttons just to open documents and web-pages and stuff...windows has tons of keyboard shortcuts and desktop/start menu shortcuts as it is. On my first keyboard I just didn\'t use them. But over time I grew to absolutely adore them. And now I can\'t live without them, I don\'t even have the icons for the things the buttons on this keyboard represent on my desktop or start menu...my keyboard is the sole access point for them!
Highly recommended, etc, etc, etc, my apologies for being so long-winded!
