Illuminated / Backlit Keyboards - Advice Wanted

Hardware and technical stuff
21

Depends on how flexible you are, and what kinds of games you are playing with your keyboard. I’m a fast typist and I notice the keyblocking issue from time to time, but it’s far from being a dealbreaker for me because I didn’t have to sacrifice anything in order to adapt. And I was warned in advance and braced myself for possible problems.

Some typists (or gamers, more likely) who are more dependent on (or just in the habit of) pressing more than two keys at a time on a regular basis will have a much harder time with that than I did, so if you have a local reseller I think a buy-it-and-try-it strategy would be wisest.

22

So, I’m not sure what exactly I’m looking for, so I just held down keys simultaneously to see if they registered. For instance,
A,S,D,F,G could all register simultaneously, but no adjacent letter keys could be held down (J, however, could make it in as the sixth.

Modifier keys (space, shift, etc) could be held down at the same time as the sixth key, and and many combos were stackable on top of that (alt, ctrl, space, shift + 5 letters).

And true to the website, only 3/4 of each block of function keys up to (again) the max of six total keys.

Everything on the numeric keypad counts towards the 6 key total, irrespective of num lock, as well as the arrow keys and home,insert, delete, etc.

23

Hrm, that sounds totally usable then. I’ll have to grab myself one of those puppies.

24

my illuminated one gets greasy/dirty though that i can’t seem to clean. there’s a new backlit one from logitech out.

25

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/products/I_O_Devices/productdetail.aspx?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&sku=A2063803&dgc=AF&cid=3881&lid=77903&acd=CAqD7bLWUPI-gM63vtnsxaNPs32n3rUirQ

$59.99 from dell canada.

26

Are the RGB keyboards being sold lately a gimmick, or are they actually functional? I made this web page and am wondering if I should also generate game config files/profiles for the gadgets. (Assuming the config files are plain text.)

http://isometricland.net/keyboard/keyboard.php

27

functional how? mass effect andromeda had some support for my g710 pulsating with damage but it was annoying.

28
  • Do they work well for organizing hotkeys?
  • Or do the colors bleed to other keys too much?
  • Are the keyboards easy to set up?
  • Is the whole idea just a giant annoyance?

Also,

  • Which is the most popular brand?
  • Can configurations be shared between brands?
  • Are there any common standards between different brands’ config file formats?
29

I found that Corsair has a repository of configuration files that users can share. It also seems some games can deal with the keyboards interactively and display custom effects, like waves and SMB mushrooms. This is all very confusing.

30

I bought a corsair rapidfire rbg for my son’s first computer (birthday next month), man it is pretty sweet… i’m not a big fan of flash, but it’s pretty cool how you can control the backlight of each key… also it’s a very nice mechanical.

31

Are the config files saved as plain text? I would like to take a look at a config file and see how it works.

32

Not sure, it’s very configurable, and you can submit/download configs through the software… I’ve got it packed up with all the other stuff until my kid’s birthday…