Logisys Black Illuminated Keyboard

If your like me you type pretty fast when your train of thought is flowing over, and even though spell checks can catch what you mess up on, the fact is that the keys are just so dang ‘sticky’ it gets annoying. Then you find yourself jamming the keys down just to be sure that your getting what your typing to register. When you type you want a fluid motion, a light touch and smooth press to the keys, so its not so hard on your hands. This keyboard was severely lacking. After the week of use arthritis was flaring and my finger joints were sore from having to firmly press the buttons, which would still somehow jam in their sockets, and the ‘sticking’ didn’t lessen after good usage like I thought it would. The keys were just an absolute horror to my hands and so I was not impressed.

The second thing I didn’t like were the color the keys were. The metallic silver was ok, and not so bad and they weren’t slippery, but the letters, numbers and wording on them were set up for the EL lighting, so they were clear. Well, with the lettering all transparent and the keys silver, from the angle you sit at your PC some of the keys were hard to read unless you had the EL light on all the time. Every time I tried using the EL light, my keyboard would lock up and I’d have to restart my PC. I have no idea why it wouldn’t work, for I did use the Office Lock Key to run the enhanced function key but it didn’t help, and so wound up working most of the time with the EL off.

Even with the scroll wheel there I didn’t really use it, since I use my mouse with my other hand. I think that the scroll wheel would be great for right handed people, but for me it wasn’t of much use. You can use it to open a pop-up list to access frequently used documents, applications, websites and so on, but again I found that its use wasn’t of much use for me, other than being blue and pretty on the keyboard. You have copy, paste and cut buttons there as well, which are nice when you are working at a fast pace, just pushing one button instead of the ctrl+c, ctrl+v is a good change.

I didn’t even get to the multimedia keys, except for the volume control which worked just fine. But the more I used the keyboard the more I got fed up with it. I did use my hot keys I set up, which were great and worked perfectly as described. My kids found a great use for the Application Key Zone, which they used several times a day. Now, almost every keyboard has a sleep button or turn off key that shuts your system down. In all my years of using my Dell keyboard not once had my kids shut my system down by pushing them, or put it into sleep mode, and believe me they hit every key they possibly can.

With the Logisys Keyboard my system was shut down on average three times a day and put into sleep mode more times than I can count using the hot keys. The buttons are in a spot that just seem to scream ‘touch me!’ and so kids do… and often. Now you could say that Why don’t you just shut off the enhanced keys with the Office Lock Key? I did. They push that button too, and my six year old learns quick which buttons do what. Its impossible to keep my children off or away from my system because it is in the living room, and they do play games on it, so for a person with little kids I’d definitely say that this keyboard is not for you. If you don’t have kids, then this problem wouldn’t be an issue. :)

After using this keyboard I must say that I am a little disappointed. If the keys weren’t so clunky in function I’d view it a lot better. The EL lights are nice though, especially if you have a system that boasts a lot of illumination, and in that case this keyboard would fit in nicely. I did like the hot keys, being able to set them to what I wanted, which was handy. The keyboard is large though, with a built in wrist wrest of plastic, so if you use a gel wrist rest like I do you’ll have to forgo it, for it likely won’t fit on the desk with the keyboard (and I have a small desk). Overall the Office, Internet and Multimedia Pro Character- Illuminated Keyboard does look pretty all lit up and gets points for its style, multitude of capabilities and price, but it doesn’t really shine in my eyes and so I give it a 5 out of 10.

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