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Ideazon ZBoard Customizable Gaming Keyboard Review
An anonymous user submitted a review of the ZBoard Gaming Keyboard. You really ought to check this one out just to see how nuts it is. It has custom plates with keys that are movable and... well just look at it. I can't decide if its pure genius or just ridiculous.
Ridiculous
This is for people that can't even type let alone find asdw and spend more time looking at the keyboard then playing or doing anything else productive with the keyboard...mouse people
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
does it have those stupid alternate functins on all the F-Keys, and if so, are the bloody things turned off by defaut.
Now I kinda like my Micorosft Natural Keyboard wing-ding, it saves my hands a bit, but it pisses me off whenever I'm playing a game and cant figure out whether PrntScrn is working, or whether the F-keys will work when i need them to. GRR!
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Taco,
You recently and candidly discussed the supposed "conspiracy" surrounding article submissions. One thing that I felt was left conspicuously unmentioned was what has been coined "Slashvertisements" e.g. enthusiastic submissions that promote underwhelming and uninteresting products. I remember seeing this keyboard in CompUSA (of all mundane places), at least six months ago. The only logical conclusions are: a) the editors don't get out much and have lost touch with what's considered new and exciting tech or b) OSDN is being compensated to provide stealth marketing services. Please provide some insight.
Thank you,
The Slashdot Community.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I actually saw an 'extension' (aka keyset) for this device a while back - snap on keyset for BF2 controls. At the time I thought the keyset was for regular qwerty keyboards, but they are actually for the product being reviewed.
TFA loaded too slowly for me to have a look at (read: short attention span), but it strikes me that this product is a bit redundant. How many CS players suddenly forget which is the flashlight key? How many people in BF2 have to stop and think "How the hell do I crouch??". No-one that has played the game for more than a couple of hours anyway.
In the end, I can only really see this benefiting newbies. Or maybe those that have only played Nethack for less than 100 hours...
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
In December 2004, I bought the ZBoard and the key plate for use with World of Warcraft. It was instantly apparent that it was a crappy product for the simple reason that the "special" keys were on the right side of the keyboard. 99% of gamers I know are familiar with wasd and use their left hand to move and use the right hand to control the mouse. Having the extra keys on the right side of the board means you either have to reach over to the right side with your left hand, or take your hand off the mouse to use them.
Another thing that contributed to the suckiness of the board was the fact that there was absolutely no facility to take a screenshot. This was right when WoW was new and I was taking screenshots all the time. There was some sort of hack they provided, I think on their website, that included a "screenshot.exe" type deal that you had to go configure so that when you pressed "custom1" key or something like that, it would take a screenshot. For a device whose selling point is convenience, I found this appalling. In general most of the special keys are just hard-coded existing key combos. E.g. if you can skip to hotkey bank 3 by pressing "Shift 3" then the ZBoard just presses "Shift 3" for you, so if you happen to leave focus in a text entry box and press that key, you'll see a "#". Big deal. I thought it was going to have some kind of API with the game that let you do more interesting things. Alas.
Today that keyboard is serving as a USB hub.
rooooar