Logitech keyboard

[claidheamhmor]

A few weeks ago I finally got sick of the regular random disconnects from my Logitech MX5000 Bluetooth wireless keyboard, and bought a replacement: the Logitech G11 gaming keyboard.

Some of the nice features:

• It's wired. No more wireless disconnects.


• The keys are all backlit in blue; nice for dim environments.
  
• The arrow keys and ins/del/home/end/pgup/pgdn keys are in conventional layout, not the stupid new layout Microsoft and Logitech seen to like nowadays.


• Rotary volume control.


• Best of all: 18 fully programmable additional keys on the left. These can be programmed to do particular keystrokes or keystroke sequences or run apps or do various things, all specifically in particular apps, if desired. That's a lot of combinations! I have some of my keys set to run programs, and others to do certain things. For example, the very convenient G13, G14 and G15 keys do copy, cut and paste; so much easier than Ctrl C, Ctrl X and Ctrl V. I have one key set to do a Ctrl A Ctrl C in order to select all and copy; this is so that when I type up a long post response and click post, it doesn't disappear into the ether when our flaky Internet connection drops the connection.

On the downside:

• The keyboard comes with two built-in auxiliary USB ports. This would seem useful, except that they're not USB 2.0, so no use as all for flash drives or hard drives. Might be handy for a mouse or joystick though.


• The soft-touch keys don't have the best tactile feedback around.

Otherwise, great device.

Comments

[argonel.livejournal.com]

Nice choice. That keyboard is the little brother to the G15 I used right up until I switched most of my computing to my laptop. It's still plugged into my desktop machine, I just hardly ever turn it on. And yes the extra usb ports do work very nicely for a mouse and a joystick. Or for anything else you would want ot plug in on your desktop that doesn't require high speed data transfer.

[claidheamhmor]

Yep. I'm rather enjoying it. It was a pretty reasonable price too; I didn't want to fall into spending ludicrous amounts of money like I did with the MX5000.

[winterhawk.livejournal.com]

I love my G11. It's funny--I'd bought a G19 (the bells-and-whistles gaming keyboard complete with its own little screen) and macro'ed all my WoW tank's rotation to the little macro keys off to the side (it has 12)...but then last week it just stopped recognizing the keystrokes. I called Logitech, went through various diagnostics, and they determined that yeah, there was a problem. I'm supposed to send it back to them and they'll send me a new one.

Meantime, I went out to buy a replacement and found the G11, which has 18 macro keys (but no screen--who cares? The thing wasn't useful at all, I found). And it was a third of the price. I bought it and I love it. I still need to send the G19 back--but when they replace it, it'll get stuck on my other machine. I'm not giving up my G11.

[claidheamhmor]

Definitely good value, and it works well. I'm glad I got it.