Blade Edge

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So my Logitech diNovo wireless Bluetooth keyboard/media pad/mouse finally showed up today. I swear the UPS guy just dropped it on the porch and left because I have three dogs, two of which yap their heads off if someone so much as sneezes out on the porch, and I never heard them barking. So I never even knew it had been delivered until like 2pm! Then I had to leave for work halfway through install. Noooo!!!

When I finally got home and finished setting everything up, I was a happy happy person. Well, almost. Let’s break it down shall we?

First of all – this keyboard is thin. And by thin I mean freakin thin. Like, 1/2 inch thin. Very cool, and very comfortable. I read somewhere it’s ergonomic cause it keeps your wrists aligned properly with your arms. Whatever. It feels good. The keys are so flat that my fingers can just kinda breeze along em. I’m definetly going to be typing faster than I was before once I get the hang of the key spacing (my laptop had a smaller keyboard). The keyboard has several of those programmable buttons for launching apps, I have em set up to load Firefox, Outlook, and Google. Then of course there’s the “Enhanced Function Keys” which let me open, close, save, reply, send, forward, etc. There’s an F-Lock key tho, so I can toggle between the enhanced and normal function keys without having to hold down another key. Good. The mouse is way better than my Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 as well. The forward/back buttons are higher up so I’m not clicking them by accident, and there are two buttons, one above and one below the scroll wheel that I can press to scroll like page up/page down. Saves wear and tear on the wheel and my scroll finger. There’s also a button that brings up a task switcher window. I still use Alt+Tab if my hand’s near the keyboard tho. Finally we have the media pad, a seperate number pad device with an LCD display screen.

This is where the dissapointment sets in.

I’m quite surprised that Logitech never made any attempts at releasing some sort of SDK for this media pad thing. Being able to display messages and track info on the LCD alone is worth a lot. The media pad supports Outlook email, MSN, Yahoo, Media Player, and Logitechs own Media Center. But that’s about it. What about WinAmp? Eudora? Trillian?? They all have plugins! Why were none ever created to be able to work with this thing? The reasoning is beyond me, but it’s pretty much rendered the media pad to an oversized calculator (tho the calc function is cool). Even when it was checking my Outlook emails, it would only display one email header. How stupid is that? There should have at least been a way to scroll through multiple incoming emails. I ended up disabling the function.

Luckily the media controls (play, stop, puse, track change, volume) work okay with WinAmp 5. But I’m still peeved I can’t get track, playtime and other info for such a popular and much-used media player.

So there you have it. I love the keyboard and mouse, but the media pad’s lack of functionality disgusts me. Was it worth $180? yea, I still think so, since the keyboard and mouse are just so great. Heck I’m proud enough of the fact that I’m able to drop such cash for a freakin keyboard/mouse combo . Still, that damn media pad has left me with regrets. Hopefully someday Logitech will pull its head out of its ass or just plain stop sucking up to MS.