new keyboard

A quick question: your childhood friend, your school’s idol, your cousin, or your adopted imouto?

You could say that the asthetic appeal of the G15 influenced my decision to purchase a new one, or perhaps I was just a bit tired of using the same (relatively) generic Logitech keyboard again and again. More pictures would’ve been taken, but it’s unfortunate that the camera I’m currently borrowing for this is lacking in practical fidelity as you will soon witness; they simply don’t do the product justice… and on that note, I actually did leave the house. It’s a wonder I’m still alive given that I was thought to deteriorate and/or erode away upon direct contact with fresh air; sunlight similarly causes instantaneous and irreversible blindness. I guess this is the due punishment for deliberately locking myself up in a dark room for years, with constant exposure to monitor radiation in the hopes that I would one day attain superhuman mutant powers and the ability to shoot lasers from my eyes; it was a foolish ideal that tested the limits of my long-term persistence, but I shall not give up now.

LCD screen showing Ventrilo status, though the camera flash removes the back-light

The LCD panel can be customised to display various details, such as World of Warcraft statistics, WinAmp, CPU/RAM usage, clock, etc; while not entirely practical, it does possess a good amount of cosmetic appeal, and user-created mods warrant you the ability to extend the functions beyond its stock limits; the screen is further complimented by your standard media control buttons. The two USB slots located at the top of the keyboard allow me to plug low-power devices in (like my mouse), though it’s restricted to such fundamental peripherals because ultimately it all draws its juice directly from one USB slot. Additionally, there are six extra buttons for personalised macros which can be programmed on-the-fly with the hit of a key, and a “gaming mode”, which essentially removes the use of the Windows key (so you don’t accidentally minimise your application); I guess it’s a justified gimmick, even if there already exists numerous alternatives to circumvent the process of unintentionally hitting that annoyingly placed key resulting in your premature background death. In the end, it’s a pretty comfortable keyboard though, and the keystrokes are fairly silent, so that’s definitely a plus.

Snapshot with the lights turned off in all of its glowing LED glory; as you can see, the panel is properly backlit in this shot, albeit horribly disfigured and illegible due to the camera.

Pricing? This keyboard set me back $89 AUD, which isn’t too bad considering I basically waltzed into the local computing hardware store and picked it up. Dropped by at Electronics Boutique later to check out some stuff; to my surprise I found the same model there, though it cost $180 AUD which is practically double the price I paid. Talk about a contrasting price difference, and a reminder that such hardware peripherals should never be purchased at the usual brick and mortar store.

~ by Espydon on 21 April, 2008.