Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard

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by Greg King on August 29, 2006 in Peripherals

Are you looking for the ultimate gamers keyboard? We say the ultimate because you are supplied with 18 quick shortcut keys, in addition to a crisp LCD screen that can display a myriad of useful information.

Page 3 – Installation &amp Software



There really isn’t a whole lot to installing the G15. If you can put your shoes on, you can get this keyboard up and going. Once installed however, there is a bit more that you have to do in order to get the LCD display to work correctly.

Provided in the box was a driver CD. On this CD is the software that will allow you to use the G15’s LCD display. The software version on the CD is v1.02 and at the time this review goes live, Logitech’s website still has this version as the latest software version.

Before we can get to the installation of the software, Logitech has system requirements that your PC must meet in order for you to use the G15 to its full potential. Unsure if you’re PC meets the requirements? Rest easy as it doesn’t take a beefy PC to run this software but the G15 does require Windows XP.

Once the autorun of the CD takes over, you are presented with a lot of extra software that you can either choose to install or leave alone. As I always do, I did not install any of the extras as I am not interested in any of the offerings.

Once installed, the program you use to control the LCD display is fairly straight forward and to the point. You start out with a window that has a drop box in it. You can drop this box down and select the supported game.

From this screen, you can also assign functions to your macro ‘G’ keys that we spoke of earlier. The following pictures show you what all you can do with your macro keys. These are not regulated for gaming but rather, anyone can use these keys for almost any situation.

As you can see, there are many different functions that you can assign your macro keys to that can help you in a game. While I don’t really thing that taking my fingers off of the WASD keys in BF2 is a good idea, there are times when the action is slow, that you can hit these keys and bring up whatever information that you need.

In Rome: Total War, the macro keys really shine. As stated earlier, FPS games require a lot of attention and fast reflexes. While a RTS is no less intense, the pace is sometimes a bit slower and the macro keys allow you to control your units a lot closer than one would have been able before the G15. You can select only infantry or only mounted units. This is similar to assigning a group number to an army but being able to select like units with one button is nice.

Turn on, Tune in, drop out’.an LCD adventure:

Now we are getting into the most interesting piece of the G15, the LCD display. As stated in the software section of the review, there is a lot that you can control and have displayed on the LCD display. These include:

Initial applet selection

Music and Multimedia

FRAPS

CPU and RAM usage. Note the CPU usage bar and the two separate bars, one for each of my 4600+’s cores.

Xfire


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