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Overall Rating

Quality keyboard, a few design problems
I have been using this keyboard for roughly a week now, and I have been enjoying my experience. As others have noted, this key board very accurately mimics the feel of a laptop keyboard. In the case of my laptop, this keyboard is quieter, and has a crisper feel.

The key placement also mimics that of a laptop keyboard, most notably with the placement of the arrow keys and the Home, Delete, Page Up, etc keys (which are placed vertically). It did take me a little bit of time to get acquainted with these newly placed keys, but upon doing so, I have had relatively no issues with using them, which is something that I was initially concerned about when considering this board.

Aside from the previously mentioned keys, most everything is in order. There is no function key, and in addition to my particular laptop (15.4″), there is a number pad - a must in my book. There are also media keys, which are convenient. However, for some odd reason, there is no mute button. I find this to be a rather frustrating omission, because it is the most useful of the media keys in my opinion. I have simply been using the mute button on my laptop instead though, so this issue is not too severe.

Besides the lack of a mute key, the only point of contention that I have with the keyboard is with the apple keys. There is one placed on either side of the spacebar, right next to the spacebar. This has 2 major implications:

1. There is no context menu button on the right side of the keyboard. This may be a non issue for most, as I don’t see many people actually use this key. I, for one, miss it.

2. This is the big one. The alt keys are consequently smaller (on the left side), and are also displaced in order to fit this key. I alt-tab often, and I find myself still hitting the apple key at times when I mean to hit the alt key. In vista, this ends up bringing up the flashier, slower alternative to alt-tab, which results in some irritation. This issue is more pronounced on the left side of the keyboard, as the left alt key is the smaller of the two.

All in all, this is a very solid keyboard. Most importantly, it types Very well; it precisely mimics laptop keyboards, and in some cases surpasses them. The keys have a good tactile response, and they are about as quiet as can be. The minor negatives about this board are the shifted Home keys and the lack of the mute media key. The major negative is the useless and poorly placed apple key (which doubles as an additional windows key on windows machines). None of these issues are dealbreakers, however, and I would highly recommend this keyboard, especially at the price!