bob the goat
11-29-2006, 09:05 AM
I recently saw this keyboard (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7808606&type=product&productCategoryId=cat01060&id=1142293958069) for sale at Best Buy. My keyboard is a little dated, and I thought it would be a nice upgrade.
The first thing I noticed was that when I hooked it up to my fully updated XP pro system it would not recognize it, and a majority of the letter keys would not function. I ran the install, and it proceeded to load a 40 meg program. That program was always running in the background. Fine. I don’t like that, but whatever.
I hop into WOW and spend some time re-mapping keys to use the new control surface. It was a little frustrating because some of the buttons had a little letter on them showing what letter that key was actually pressing, i.e. the jump button said Jump, then below that said (Space), the forward button has an up arrow and below it (W). Apparently the designers that made those keys were thoughtful, but the ones that worked on some of the other keys were not so helpful. The other designers did not feel the need to include that little clue as to what it was I what button I was pressing.
The piece of software that installed, as best as I could tell, was 99.95% useless. The only USEFUL thing it managed to do was install the driver. When opened it gave you a list of common games and when clicked on it would show what each button was for. Apparently the designers were not so sure that I have ever played a game before. They felt the need to determine the best key settings for me without asking. One example is in WOW. I spend 95% of my time on my 60 grinding for mats or cash, or in a raid. I don’t have a use for the Quest button all that often. A key I FREQUENTLY use brings up the raid screen. Under each game on in their software was a selection that said “default”. This gave me the impression that I could create different layouts and use the software to switch between them. i.e. I could switch to raiding and have all my macro’s for different things hot keyed, to then switch to alt grinding mode and replace the raid screen button with the quest log button. There was no such functionality. That was a lie. It did not matter if I was in Windows with the Windows default selected, or in WOW with the window selected, everything worked the same.
There is also a glitch that caused the keyboard to randomly stick and one letter would go nuts. Once this happened with forward and I almost ran into monster encampment. Another time it happened and I attacked a guard that I had targeted, so I got a Dishonor Kill, then the last few times it happened in windows. Every time the only way to clear the error was to go into the useless software and click on a different “default” and activate it. I thought that it was because I went into WOW, without changing the WOW default to active, but then noticed that it happened more often when I had actually taken the time to activate the default for the game I was in.
On a separate note, they took the arrow keys and the block above it containing delete insert etc and smushed them into the number keypad. I understand that they did this for space reasons, I mean who wants a 4 foot wide keyboard, but in the mean time it made that entire block useless. The delete key never worked.
I returned the keyoard and exchanged it, thinking that I may have had a bad one. I deleted the driver and re-installed. The EXACT same problems happened, and the delete key still does not work.
I’m going to give it a 1 / 10. The one point is for a good concept, the -9 points is for doing a horrible job executing it.
The first thing I noticed was that when I hooked it up to my fully updated XP pro system it would not recognize it, and a majority of the letter keys would not function. I ran the install, and it proceeded to load a 40 meg program. That program was always running in the background. Fine. I don’t like that, but whatever.
I hop into WOW and spend some time re-mapping keys to use the new control surface. It was a little frustrating because some of the buttons had a little letter on them showing what letter that key was actually pressing, i.e. the jump button said Jump, then below that said (Space), the forward button has an up arrow and below it (W). Apparently the designers that made those keys were thoughtful, but the ones that worked on some of the other keys were not so helpful. The other designers did not feel the need to include that little clue as to what it was I what button I was pressing.
The piece of software that installed, as best as I could tell, was 99.95% useless. The only USEFUL thing it managed to do was install the driver. When opened it gave you a list of common games and when clicked on it would show what each button was for. Apparently the designers were not so sure that I have ever played a game before. They felt the need to determine the best key settings for me without asking. One example is in WOW. I spend 95% of my time on my 60 grinding for mats or cash, or in a raid. I don’t have a use for the Quest button all that often. A key I FREQUENTLY use brings up the raid screen. Under each game on in their software was a selection that said “default”. This gave me the impression that I could create different layouts and use the software to switch between them. i.e. I could switch to raiding and have all my macro’s for different things hot keyed, to then switch to alt grinding mode and replace the raid screen button with the quest log button. There was no such functionality. That was a lie. It did not matter if I was in Windows with the Windows default selected, or in WOW with the window selected, everything worked the same.
There is also a glitch that caused the keyboard to randomly stick and one letter would go nuts. Once this happened with forward and I almost ran into monster encampment. Another time it happened and I attacked a guard that I had targeted, so I got a Dishonor Kill, then the last few times it happened in windows. Every time the only way to clear the error was to go into the useless software and click on a different “default” and activate it. I thought that it was because I went into WOW, without changing the WOW default to active, but then noticed that it happened more often when I had actually taken the time to activate the default for the game I was in.
On a separate note, they took the arrow keys and the block above it containing delete insert etc and smushed them into the number keypad. I understand that they did this for space reasons, I mean who wants a 4 foot wide keyboard, but in the mean time it made that entire block useless. The delete key never worked.
I returned the keyoard and exchanged it, thinking that I may have had a bad one. I deleted the driver and re-installed. The EXACT same problems happened, and the delete key still does not work.
I’m going to give it a 1 / 10. The one point is for a good concept, the -9 points is for doing a horrible job executing it.