About 2 years ago, I noted that I have unwittingly become a Logitech person – every PC peripheral I purchase would be a Logitech product. Yes it’s not planned at all, it just happened this way.

Well I just did it again. Recently while just “window shopping” with a friend, I came across this product from Logitech:

It’s the Logitech G105 Gaming Keyboard. Now, I’ve been meaning to get a backlit keyboard for awhile now. However, they are still expensive to me. Usually they cost about S$150 (US$119 or so). Imagine to my surprise and glee, that this one was only S$65. It was a no-brainer. The “window shopping” resulted in me lugging home this keyboard and quickly setting it up.

Why do I want a backlit keyboard in the first place? Well if you’re a gamer, chances are you’ll already know the answer. For everyone else, the reason is because we gamers tend to play games late into the night. This is even more true if you play an online game (such as Star Wars The Old Republic, or Everquest, or World Of Warcraft etc). Why do we play late into the night? Because most of our guildmates are in US, and the raids/high level activity usually starts during daylight hours in US time, not Singapore time.

And since we play late into the night, sometimes we may not want to turn on the lights. Some people may have a dim orange light (or “night light”) on, but for the most part, if I don’t turn on the lights, my room will be in complete darkness, save the light coming from the monitor. Having a backlit keyboard will make it easier to see the keys.

The above is my ONLY criteria for getting a backlit keyboard. Now for the bonuses (not critical to me, but VERY NICE to have):

1. 6 “G-keys” on the left side for you to program keystrokes. With 3 more memory setting switches, it expands the number of programmable keys from 6 to 18!
2. The G-keys can even be scripted – meaning you write complex scripts to simulate keystrokes, or launch programs etc from just press 1 key!
3. You can record macros into the G-keys on the fly (without using the Logitech software), even during a game!
4. It has a “gaming” toggle switch, which disables the Windows key and the Menu keys. No more sudden minimizing of game windows when you’re frantically mashing keys trying to stay alive when swamped by monsters and accidentally hitting the Windows key. In an MMO, the sudden minimizing of windows CAN KILL YOU! Especially during raids or boss fights.
5. The backlighting can be switched off during the day, or when your room is brightly lit. Personally I have grown used to the nice cool blue glow from the keys that I leave it on all the time.
6. WASD and arrow keys are coloured for your convenience. Why? Because the majority of games uses this key combination for movement. If I am not wrong, the WASD key combination was made popular by ID software in their game “Doom” back in the 1990’s. Now every shooter uses this key combination (even non-shooter games are starting to use this combination too!)
7. Control your PC volume via the F-keys with the FN key (useful for people who like to listen to MP3 while playing games or doing work). You don’t need to exit your application/game to change the volume.

Actually come to think of it, this keyboard is actually useful in the office too! Why?

Have you ever needed to enter 100 rows of items in Excel, each row only changing 1 or 2 characters? Otherwise each row is the same as the one above it? With this keyboard, you can record a macro to simulate your keypresses to navigate to next row, press ENTER, up-arrow, DELETE, etc until the part which require you to type in the new/different character of this row.

For now, I have programmed a couple of the G-keys to launch my favourite game(s), so I don’t need to have their icons cluttering up my desktop.

By the way, the more expensive “older brother” of this keyboard is the Logitech G510 Gaming Keyboard. That one costs S$139. The differences are pretty minor. For example, you can select your backlight colour from orange to blue to green etc. It also comes with an LCD panel that shows you info about the current song you’re playing or some other gaming-related info. Other than that, it is the same as my current one.