The other day I had to poke my head into the IT Department room at my current temp job to ask them a question. Before they answered me, one of the guys asked “Are you the one who brought her own keyboard?” When I answered in the affirmative they all grinned and hailed me as “A true professional!” I do try.

The keyboard in question is the Logitech G11, a model made for gamers. It’s notable for several features, including how freaking big it is and the blue backlit keys. But the main reason I bought it and brought it to work are the 18 programmable keys that grace the left edge of my happy beast.

Back when I started working at Laptop I quickly determined that if my wrists were going to survive all the repetitive Photoshop commands and massive copying and pasting I would have to find a way to make it so I didn’t have to move my hands around as much. Keyboard shortcuts are definitely my friends, but many of them require two hands to do comfortably. Plus, I need to use the mouse. The ideal situation would be to have one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse.

I figured there had to be a keyboard out there for people who wanted this – my job is not so super-specific that this is a niche need. In fact, my current job is in marketing, not mainly web content, and I found the need just as pressing. I would guess that a majority of people who work office jobs could use a keyboard that helps with repetitive shortcut tasks. Yet I have not found a keyboard that caters to people like us.

There are plenty of gaming keyboards. Plenty. Too many, really. Logitech devotes something like 33% of their keyboard line to gamers. There ia only 1 “Natural” keyboard, which is a nod to office environments and ergonomics, but no keyboards made with designers, coders, or repetitive shortcut users in mind. The fact that the G11 is exactly what I need is a fluke, not a feature.

Not that I’m complaining – I couldn’t ask for a better keyboard. The programmable keys give me exactly what I need, allowing me to execute simple shortcuts (like Ctrl+C) and more complex combinations (Ctrl+N, Enter, Ctrl+V for pasting a new image into Photoshop) with just one press of a button. And when I have to do a series of the same command over and over, having each on one key allows me to get into a rhythm quickly and complete the work faster. I also love that the 18 keys have 3 modes, so really you have 18×3 keys you can program and can switch modes when you switch apps or tasks or whatever.

The keyboard could still use a few improvements, all of which could come about after a 20 minute conversation with someone who uses it for more than 12 hours every day.

I don’t get why my demographic is ignored in this product space. There are many millions of us and many thousands of companies that employ us. One would think that the potential for selling that many units would make the upper echelon at Logitech, Microsoft, Kensington, and any number of mainstream keyboard makers drool with anticipation. Is it that they aren’t paying attention? Or maybe I am missing a whole category of keyboard products currently hidden from my view.

The sad coda to this story is that Logitech doesn’t seem to favor the G11 very much and now produces many gaming keyboards with far fewer programmable keys or no dedicated ones on the left at all. Perhaps they discovered that this function was not desired by gamers. I say: forget them and re-brand that keyboard for the office set! We don’t need the backlit keys or the media controls up top. Just give us something functional, easy to configure, and comfortable and we’ll spend the money. Or we’ll force our companies to.

Tags: gaming keyboards, linkedin, Logitech, Logitech G11, product ideas, product reviews

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm and is filed under My Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.