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I've always been one who thought that a keyboard was a keyboard. As long as it has 26 letters, 10 numbers, and some other useful symbols, then it is fine with me. But recently I acquired a Microsoft Office Keyboard to review and I certainly don't think that anymore!

Installation

Installation is just a matter of plugging the keyboard into an available USB port on your computer. I didn't have an available port, so I used the PS/2 adapter that came with the package and plugged it in a standard PS/2 port on my computer and it worked just fine. I went to the Microsoft site and downloaded the most recent version of the IntelliType software and it installed without any issues. The keyboard witll work without the software, and all of the defaults of the keyboard will work as well. You need the software only if you want to reprogram any of the buttons.

Testing

The Microsoft Office Keyboard has all of the standard keys that you would expect, and also 54 programmable keys. These keys are also very quiet. In order to make room for some of these new keys, they have changed a few locations of keys, which takes some getting used to. Instead of having 2 rows of buttons above the arrow keys, there are 5 buttons, with the DELETE key being the size of 2 buttons. I've been used to the normal location of these buttons, and so for a couple of weeks I kept pressing the wrong button.

The Hot Keys at the top of the keyboard are nice to start frequently used programs. Mose people will find the defaults for these keys useful, but you can also program them to start any program you wish. You can also disable the key if you have no need for it.

Very few people use the Function keys (F1, F2... F12) on the keyboards, and Microsoft has turned them into more useful keys. Instead of using F5 to refresh a web page, you can use it as the File - Open command. Instead of using F12 for nothing, you can use it to Print. I tried to get used to this, but I just couldn't. I am so used to keyboard shortcuts (ALT-F4 to Close, F5 to Refresh, F1 for Help, etc.) that I ended up turning the F Lock on and using the keys as standard function keys. I think that most advanced users would end up doing this as well. One thing that I didn't like about using the F Lock key was that when the computer is rebooted, the F Lock key would turn off by default. There didn't appear to have any way to tell it to stay on all the time.

UPDATE
I received the following from a visitor to the web site:

I noticed your article @ http://www.pcin.net/help/hardware/msok.php regarding the F Lock Key. I found a site that has 2 reg files on it that remaps the F button so you can permenantly disable the F Lock Key located @ http://mvps.org/jtsang/flock.html
It basically flips the mapping around in W2K and WXP so that by default it acts as if the F Key has been pressed when u logon to Windows.. Very useful cos myself I hate not using the old way of doing things.. I press F5 a lot.. and I use a IRC Script that has F keys shortcuts so it makes it a pain in the butt ..
Hope this information helps..
Cheers.. goofydave

Thanks goofydave! In deed it does help!

The Single Touch Pad on the left has a Back and Forward button, a scroll wheel, a set of Cut, Copy and Paste buttons, and an Application Switch which acts as if you had pressed ALT + TAB to switch between programs. The scroll wheel scrolls much faster than my mouse, and so I loved using it to get through large documents. The Application Switch also was very handy. As with the function keys above, I couldn't get used to using the Cut, Copy, Paste, Back, and Forward buttons as I am used to using the other keyboard shortcuts for them.

Images

  • The entire keyboard is very large.
  • It is about 21" at its widest and is 10" deep
  • The cable is 6' long
  • The round grey buttons on the top are the Hot Keys. The default program is listed below them, but they can be programmed for anything you want
  • The regular keys are some of the function keys. You can see that F4 becomes a New button, F5 becomes an Open button, and F6 becomes a Close button
  • The 3 semi circles between these rows of buttons are the NUM, CAPS, and SCROLL lock lights
  • This is the Single Touch Pad
  • The top two buttons are for moving Back and Forward within your browser
  • The large back area is a scroll wheel like what you would have on your mouse. It moves much faster and smoother though
  • The other three buttons are the Cut, Copy, and Paste buttons
  • Lastly is the Application Switch that lets you rotate through open programs
  • The keyboard can plug into an available USB port or into the standard keyboard PS/2 port via the adapter
  • The Key Settings tab of the IntelliType Pro software lets you change the action that is taken when you press some of the buttons.
  • With almost any button you can choose from a list of preset commands, start a program, web page or file, or disable the key

Purchase

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