Ultimate Gambit

I’m in the process of planning the building of a new computer, and the first item that I have bought, is arguably the least important. However, Scan had the keyboard in its Today Only offer, and I couldnt refuse.

So, I am now the proud owner of a Logitech G11 keyboard. And my first impressions are good.

It was a hard decision for me to make, but there were two main features that eventually ended up with me choosing the G11: Backlighting and Macro Keys. There are numerous keyboards that have backlighting – Saitek Eclipse II being the main one I was considering – however, this didnt have any macro keys, and they are a feature that I have used in the past, and couldnt really live without. There are also many boards with macro keys, but this was the only board I found in my price range which had both.

One thing I was scared about losing was my wireless, however, I realised that I don’t use the wireless functionality all that often, and having recieved the keyboard the wire is plenty long enough!

The backlighting has three modes: low, high, and off – and is subtle enough not to interfere, but high enough to be useful!
The keys have just about the right feel – light enough to require little effort, but clicky enough not to feel awful like one of those laptop keyboards! There are a couple of points on the board which don’t seem to be properly lit – just above the left shift key (the arrow lights, but the word doesnt), a similar thing on the tab key, and a few tiny discrepancies on other keys, however, none of these stop you finding the keys since at least most of them is lit.

The macro keys (G-Keys) on the whole are great, there are 18 of them and three different banks, so 54 in total and they’re really programmable. I have noticed a few things that havent been possible, or needed a bit of thinking to get them to work – you cant give Ctrl-Alt-Delete to a G-key, and you cant directly program them to open a folder. I found a workaround for the latter – setting it to open explorer with an argument of the folder you want to open, however I couldnt find a way to get Ctrl-Alt-Del to work. You can set timings in the macro’s, as well as just setting a keystroke, but neither worked (even though it did recognise the keystrokes.)

Finally there are a set of media buttons to control your various media players. These would be great except for one thing – they dont seem to work when your media player is in the background. They apparently work with Windows Media Player in the background, but who uses that these days?! Itunes and Media Player Classic both can’t recognise the buttons when they are in the background, which is, to say the least, a bit of a bummer. With any luck, this will be solved by somebody at some point, but who knows – it’s not like the keyboard hasnt been around for a while. (I suppose this could have something to do with the fact that I still have the old logitech drivers installed, but I’ll comment on this when I get my new computer.)

There are 2 USB ports on the back of the keyboard, although i’m unsure of how useful these are at the moment. I tried plugging in an Xbox 360 pad, and there wasnt enough power for it. My USB key worked, but at a slow speed. I do currently have the keyboard plugged into a hub, so that could be what’s causing the problem, but again, I’ll test this when I get a chance on my new computer.

So, all in all, it’s a really good keyboard, at a really good price of just over £30
My only regret is that I couldnt stretch to get the G11′s older brother, the G15, which is identical, but has a programmable LCD screen. The extra £15 is just a little bit too much for me to justify, but if you can stretch to it, I would say it was almost certianly worth it! The keyboard is marketed as a Gaming Keyboard, and after a long stint on Quake3 last night, I can say that it definately responds well in that environment. However it’s also great as a non gaming keyboard too. You can program macros for different programs too (such as Photoshop), as well as for games, and it types great – I am using it now, and I love it.

So, now time for my rating: [rate 4]

Through a random series of events unfolding (thanks John), and a few e-mails being sent, I last night attended the launch of the pivate beta of a new website – LocateTV.

In their own words: “The idea behind LocateTV is simple – to let you find TV shows available where you live in the world, be they on broadcast TV, online or on recorded media (DVD, HD-DVD etc).”

The project is still in the beta stages – and rightly so – there are still a large number of bugs, but the basic concept is definately an interesting one, and one that I personally feel has a lot of potential. With the release of the BBC iPlayer (for better or worse), 4onDemand and various other online TV watching choices, it is soon going to be common place for people to go online to watch their favorite (or not so favorite) TV shows. With so many services all pumping this stuff onto the net, how are you going to know where to look for it? Maybe it isnt on the net yet, but is going to be on Freeview in 2 days time? The idea behind LocateTV is to group all of this together in one easy to search location. And for the most part, it works. In addition, if the show you are looking for is not on TV any time soon, it’ll allow you to price check the best DVD prices.

It’s not exhaustive at the moment (I couldnt find The Tomorrow People on there) – but it’s not finished. In addition, the search needs a bit of work – searching for Angel gives me a lot of people named Angelica, but not the TV series I want, and sometimes you will get two versions of the same site – but these are all kinks that will be ironed out over time, and hopefully in time for the launch.

There is also an option to embed all this information on your own blog/forum/site using a standardised dynamic graphic, that will update to track your favorite show, actor or whatever. At the moment, this is a large clunky graphic, but I was told last night that there will be multiple options made available!

In my mind, once the kinks get ironed out, this will be an excellent resource that I will use almost daily (especially if the add RSS feeds, which are sadly lacking at the moment… nudge nudge…). At the moment, to get close to all the information that they are supplying I have to flick between a number of sites – TV.com, IMDB, Radio Times, and FindDVD, where as this will give me all this information (albeit to a lesser level of depth) under one roof.

In summary, I think it is a great idea, and once the kinks are straightened out, it will definately be a resource worth using. I’ll be using it over the coming months, and will post about any major developments that I feel are worth mentioning!

So, in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled, watch the blog, sign-up for the e-mail updates, and wait patiently – it should be worth it