My greatest concern with the new batch of "Internet Keyboards" is that the software that comes with em, are often so worthless, that all the extra bells and whistles is rendered useless.

I have encountered many drivers from popular producers such as LabTec, ThermalTake and Microsoft that have broken drivers, not updated for years. Theese bugs is the first stop from being able to configure the software to make the keyboard work as told.

The second, and greater issue, is the "whats good for us is good for everyone" mentality. Most of theese extra buttons cannot be reconfigured, and even worse, the "playcontrol" buttons are often hardcoded to only work with Windows Mediaplayer!

My labtec Keyboard have 12 buttons. 4 buttons are strictly used for Windows Mediaplayer, 3 buttons are volume control (that I do not need), and the final four is supposed to be configured to "My Settings", E-mail, Search and Start.
Due to a bug in the software, everytime the keyboard configuration utility are opened, the "My Settings" button is reset, so I need to manually configure it whenever I like to change any of the buttons.

My sisters ThermalTake keyboard is also strictly used for Windows Mediaplayer (and I thought they where trying to get a COOL label at ThermalTake?).


Now, I really would like a real keyboard, with configurable buttons, and no FUCKING mediaplayer... Can anyone tip me about a such keyboard?

Logitech Elite Keyboard.
i have it and it's really great.

it also works pretty well WITHOUT drivers.
and with drivers you get everything you want 8)

Logitech Elite? Sure... Ill check it out

i have 9 configurable buttons on my logitech cordles desktop keyboard thingie.

I got a VIVANCO multimedia keyboard ...
its awesome ... I really like it ...
I do have over 10 keys to configure but can't use them since the software sucks as at least the
shutdown ... volume mute and some other keys do work from windows support ...
which is enough for me since RunIT ... is the ultimate toolstarting util

so...
what is your final choice?

I dont know yet. For me to use it, the buttons need to be remade into the swedish keyset, an I couldnt find the ones mentioned so far. The Elite one either have another name in sweden, or havnt been converted yet.

Logitech has many keyboards available though, including the Cordless Desktop, in fact, most of the Logitech boards are cordless. To me, a cordless keyboard is like a flashlight driven with suncells... two cool technologies that combined makes a good product both bad and untrustworthy for a reason I do not understand.

VIVANCO could not be found at all...

yeah they didn't make many ...
in ebay you can find 2
the one I got and the same in black with micro

but in the end its nothing for u since you want working keys

Exactly

logitech all teh way.

Logitech keyboard software is known as "iTouch" - much like nvidias forceware the itouch software is unified, and every itouch button on the KB is configuarble to a menu (which is fully customisable to programs/files/folders/web pages etc or singular progs/files/folders etc etc. This is wicked and ive been using them since they first came about. The software is stable too and does not cain system resources like other makers software does and I hate microsoft keyboards for their lack of customisation and decent software.

It's a weird world, logitech make the best keyboards whilst M$ make the best mice (the intellipoint software that is....until they decided to remove the customisable buttons option in the latest mouse software!! so I just use 4.12)


well anyway, look at all these buttons i get to play with - each oneloads a menu of custom progs like internet apps/cd burning aps and media apps etc.

http://www.fixit-4u.net/mrk/root/photos/...op_pic.jpg

yeah .. my sister got the same keyboard ... it nice but what I really realy hate is the F-Key shit ... this is so annoying ...
or did someone find a workaround here ???

if ya don't know ... anytime you want to use the F-Keys you need to press a Key to activate them because the special functions are activated by default ... that sucks ass
on this point my software was much more clever ... it only activated the special function where IE was open



btw if you have any chance to get a black-keys-keyboard get it !

just a minor note... Logitech have produced a mouse called mx510 that now offers the same thing as the old microsoft drivers did. I have used IE3.0 with ip4.0 during a couple of years, and loved it. Now I ordered the mx510 instead.

Best Regards
JemyM