Archmaille

Wave Keyboard from Logitech

Now that I’ve had my Logitech Wave Keyboard for a few weeks now I can more accurately asses my feelings for it. For those of you who are lazy bums and don’t like reading, be satisfied with the conclusion in the first paragraph and know that: I love it! Seriously never had a keyboard so comfortable in my life. It took me a week or two to get used to the number keys as I believe they have the biggest curvature to them. I would also often hit “caps lock” instead of “shift” while playing CoH for some reason. Just the reach reaction for me naturally went to the caps lock key… I’ve kind of gotten over that and become more adapt to the layout of the keyboard though.

Logitech Wave Keyboard

I honestly didn’t notice much of a comfort difference with the Logitech Wave Keyboard for a while though. It was just an ordinary keyboard. Until one day when I really started using it how it was made to be. I got back into coding for ApplyMyWay.com and blogging for money. I got home from Quintiles Wednesday wrote two entries that night, 14 entries Thursday, and 18 on Friday. All over 200 words, all unique, and no pain in my hands or wrist. You can also read about a little speed increase I’ve noticed in the original review I did of the keyboard when I first got it.

written by Archmaille

So I just got my new Logitech Wave Keyboard in the mail today! Kinda sucks because I’ll be at Pirate Fest all weekend, but it’s still nice knowing that I have a brand new keyboard to destroy!  :-P  Ok so maybe not intentionally destroy it but with how much I type every day they always die faster than they should.  Like my Logitech G15 that I’ve just retired.  Although I will very much so miss the on the fly macro keys the comfort of this keyboard is outstanding!  I’ve not been able to test it extensively but so far besides just the major comfort increase I’ve also noticed a 10 word per minute increase in my typing.  I used to average 75 words per minute, and now I’m quite easily hitting 85 sustainable.  Of course I can type faster than that but that also includes coming up with the things to say and everything associated with typing.

I have yet to test the keyboard out in game still… but will get that back to you soon.  I’ll be playing at least a couple rounds of CoH here shortly with Credal to test it out with that… even though keyboard use is limited in that game I do use a lot of shortcuts so we’ll see how it is for me getting used to the quick plant finger association of this board.  That is one thing that I’ve noticed does take me a little while to figure out.  I love the shape of the keyboard when I’m just typing, but when I have to remove my hands from the board and find the keys blindly it’s a little bit slower than with a usual keyboard, which I’m sure will be faster with time.  I also very much so dislike the smaller room between the alpha numerical keyset and the number pad.  It gives less room for the arrow keys, and the delete, home, end, page up, and page down keys… it’ll take some getting used to since I actually used to use the delete, arrow keys, home, and end keys very often.

written by Archmaille

New G15 vs old G15 Logitech Keyboards

(I have the older 2005 model, and glad I do since the G keys is what makes this keyboard for me)

If you noticed my last post was about me getting a new keyboard… honestly the only thing that’s kept me from getting a new keyboard for so long is that I really love my Logitech G15.  Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE and I do mean LOVE to have an ergonomic keyboard, however… that would mean giving up my favorite feature of all time: G keys.  The Logitech G15 has a feature that as a webpage designer is near and dear to my heart, instant recording macro keys!  All you have to do is push the “MR” key, the G key you want to assing the macro to, and type out your macro.  After you’re done you can repeat the macro as many times as you need.  I generally used these macros for website addresses that I was using in coding, or lines of code used often such as <strong> or anything else like that, that may be typed in a hundred times in a website.  It just saved time!  I’m giving up my macro keys now though… It’s a sad day for me because I really REALLY liked them.  However, the keyboard is dying, and I really should get a keyboard that is more comfortable to type on for long periods of time.

The Logitech G15 has lasted me a full 3 years, not terribly long, but a while for keyboards under the kind of stress that I put them under.  Besides the fact that I type an average of 81,000 keystrokes per day, they also travel to LAN Parties (as this G15 has seen the most travel of all my keyboards).  Bought in 2005 the day it released from NewEgg I’ve spent a lot of time getting used to this Logitech G15 keyboard… but it’s dying off.  The first sign I had of it dying was that the volume wheel at first would only sometimes work, going from not changing the volume at all to blaring it because I’d get frusterated and just sit and spin it trying to get it to change the volume.  Later the volume wheel stopped working all together.  After that the Esc key started acting erratic, mostly just not working from the many times jamming it five times in a row to skip past all the videos and loading screens of games, also being used for getting out of most games, online videos, etc.  The latest problem I’ve noticed with the keyboard is the LED’s that backlight the keyboard will now flicker going from dim to bright repeatedly until one day I’m sure they’ll quit working all together too.

I don’t really plan on finding that day when they quit working though.  I’ve got an order with the Logitech Wave Keyboard in the works.  Not to be untrue to my gaming roots, but a run with an ergonomic keyboard would be nice!  Maybe I can find a good mini-keyboard that just has macro keys to make me feel more at home when programing.

written by Archmaille

Ergonomic keyboards are nothing new, though Microsoft has had the market cornered for years (which I don’t know for sure, but I suspect has to do with patents).  One issue has never been solved with the older ergonomic keyboards though, granted they are better than straight keyboards, is the issue of finger length.

Wave Keyboard from Logitech

The Wave Keyboard from Logitech promises to fix that.  The wave is the first ergonomic keyboard to have lowered keys that are struck with the middle and ring fingers.  This design from the wave ergonomic keyboard helps to relieve stress that is presented with the forced straightening of your fingers.  Some of Microsofts ergonomic keyboards do this as well, however they tend to do so because of an extreme angle of the keys… I find this angle to be too drastic and puts stress in other areas.  I like a keyboard with a slight angle and never really thought about it, but there is still stress being put on your fingers when they’re forced to be flat which is why I like the design of the Logitech Wave Keyboard.

Logitech Wave Keyboard

I guess that is why I’ve always liked a little bit of both the extreme angled keyboards from Microsoft that help to relieve the flat finger stress, and the slight angled ergonomic keyboards from Microsoft that help the wrist pain.  I generally go for the light angle ergonomic keyboards, but now I no longer have to choose between the two I will have the best of both worlds.

This is great news for someone like myself who types about 100,000 keystrokes per day.  I’ve already killed off my Logitech G15 keyboard and it’s not even that old.  So it’s about time that it gets replaced, and this time not for gaming, but for comfort.  I would gladly get a DAS Keyboard, but even if the DAS does last longer I can get three Wave’s for the same price and be back at the same level of longitude as far as keyboard lasting time period.  I also don’t yet have the keyboard so I will tell you all how it goes… might make First Person Shooter gaming a little awkward, but we’ll see here soon enough.

written by Archmaille