If you like laptop soft touch keyboards, this one is great

I love my laptop keyboard because it takes significantly less time to make a letter appear than one of the standard higher key keyboards. I am about an 80-85 word typist on a laptop keyboard and this is cut by about 20-25% when using a standard keyboard.

I sort of gave up hope that there would be a keyboard that had the soft touch quality of a laptop. Not only has Microsoft made one, they have added a level of comfort to it. It is slightly curved so that the hands rest at a slightly more natural setting than when using the rectangular laptop keys. This curve is only minor and does add even a little extra accuracy because of the feature, so now I¡¦m in the 90 word a minute range at times. I must stress that this keyboard is nothing like the so-called ergonomic keyboards that require you to hold your hands as if about to catch a football. If that is your style, then this keyboard is not for you (they are too different to reconcile in a hurry) and let¡¦s face it, when you replace a mouse or keyboard, you don¡¦t want to have to spend much time relearning it.

The extras are also great. Above the number pad is a little button with a calculator on it; for those of us who hate run „³ calc, enter all you have to do now is hit the little button. The most impressive of the quick key functions are those tied to media players; though there is one drawback. If you use Windows Media Player, then the keys work whether WMP has focus. So you can hit the play, pause, mute etc keys and they will work even if WMP is minimized. These keys work well with other media players, but currently, they must have focus.

Apart from the Media Player keys are ¡§web/home,¡¨ ¡§search,¡¨ and ¡§mail.¡¨ Web/home will automatically launch your homepage as you would expect. It opens it in a new window in IE 6 and 7, I have no idea how it functions with earlier versions. This feature isn¡¦t different from the same option on others. The problem is that the buttons are not configurable. The search button launches the search feature within Windows, not a search website. Mail, predictably, opens Outlook. There is no way currently to configure it so that it will open a different email program, so if you have not synced Outlook, this feature is without use.

I love it because of the soft touch keys and the slight addition of comfort without sacrificing typing speed/skills. Apart for the minor issue with the quick keys, I have zero complaints about the keyboard.