My K350 came yesterday and I'm quite pleased, in contrast to the other review. I've been using PCs since 1980, so I've typed on a bunch of keyboards, all the way back to the original IBM PC and a handful of DEC and other terminal boards. This is the first "wave" keyboard that I've used, but not the first with an attached palm rest.
GENERAL:
The feel of the entire unit is solid, and the keys seem to have a good response. (It's not as solid as my Northgate OmniKey, but nobody has made mainstream metal keyboards for over a decade.) The keys seemed to be spaced and sized much like any other keyboard, then I measured. The keys on my basic Dell keyboard are 3/4" square, nearly flat, and touch each other. These keys are separated, deeper like an older keyboard, and just about 5/8" square, though there is enough space between them that they are almost 3/4" from center to center. My conclusion is that these keys are, indeed, typical in size and spacing. The wave shape makes the positions a bit different fom what I'm accustomed to, but not enough to cause me problems.
The palm rest is lightly padded and I find it quite comfortable, though for me it is a wrist rest as I have small hands -- 6 1/2" from base to fingertip. There are two feet on the back for either a 4° or an 8° angle lift. BTW, when the keyboard is flat on the desk the front edge of the palm rest is 7/8" off the desktop in the middle where you wouldn't have your hands. Where your hands go, it is 5/8" off the desktop. I must also say that my wrists are beginning to feel a wee bit chaffed, but, since I don't do that much typing any more, my habits have become lax, and I know I'm moving my hands around when I should be leaving them in place. Looking at the bottom, I'd say that the palm rest could be removed and recovered with other material, but you would have to put it back on or the base of the keyboard would stick out.
DIMENSIONS: about 19" by 10 1/8" at the widest part of the wave.
POWER: 2 AA batteries, included; on/off switch on the underside; battery monitor when you press a function key, but the picture is misleading. The picture looks as if the battery light shows you the level of power, which it does not. However, there is a tab in the SetPoint software that will at least tell me that my brand new batteries are "good." Right now the battery light is green. When you first power up the keyboard, the battery light will turn green if the batteries are good. I tried putting in a couple used batteries to see if the light has another color to tell you the batteries are low, but I couldn't find a combo that gave me anything but green or no light.
PROGRAMMABILITY:
The black set of keys at the top center that control volume and pause/play/stop/ff/rev cannot be reprogrammed.
Ten of the 12 function keys (document, spreadsheet, calendar, 3 unassigned, browser, messaging, e-mail, search) can be reprogrammed using the SetPoint software; only F11 (battery light) and F12 (CD/DVD eject) cannot. You can program the keys to: launch a program; open a file, a folder or a web page; show a custom menu; perform a keystroke combination; do nothing (very useful if you don't want to perform the default action but haven't anything else to assign to the key); or perform another of the preprogrammed actions. When you launch a program with a function key, the name of the program flashes on the screen briefly to tell you what you just started. The original set up is that you have to press the "Fn" key at the bottom right with the function key to get the special, programmed function; however, you can change it so that you press a function key alone to get a special function and have to press Fn to get the normal function key.
Of the 8 silver specialty keys, only the zoom key on the left cannot be reprogrammed. The silver "PC" key on the top far right can be changed, but in a more limited fashion. It will sleep the PC, restart, shut down, log off, or do nothing. The other 6 can be programmed the same way as the 10 function keys. That gives you a total of 16 keys that can be very flexibly programmed. I find that quite useful.
You can choose to disable the caps lock, num lock, scroll lock, Windows start, and insert keys so that you can't accidentally press them. You can also choose to have a sound play when you do press any of them, and/or have a notice flash briefly on the screen to tell you what state they are now in. There are no num lock or caps lock lights on the keyboard itself to tell you when they are on.
RECEIVER EXTENDER CABLE: I wondered about that one and couldn't find info on Logitech's site. It's a 5' USB cable that you can use to extend the range of the receiver plug. Plug the receiver in this cable, then the cable into the PC, stretch out the cable and your PC is now that much closer to your keyboard. On the other hand, I walked to the end of my room, about 15', and reception was still fine without the extender cable. I presume it's intended for use with large screen TV setups in big rooms or projection/lecture setups, because by the time you get far enough away to need it you can't see a normal PC screen. Well, *I* can't, anyway.
"UNIFYING": If you actually read the info about the devices with "unifying" technology on either the Amazon pages or the Logitech site, you will quickly realize that Logitech's "unifying" technology is new and does not work with older mice and keyboards, and that there are only a few keyboards and mice out for it at the moment. Oh, well. I guess I wasn't surprised at all that because I already had two Logitech wireless mice and neither worked with the other's receiver. I thought that was dumb till I realized that if they did speak to each other's receivers and you had two PCs in the same room using those mice, might both mice be controlling the cursors on both machines? No doubt the new tech has a way of identifying the devices and linking them to a particular machine to prevent a problem like that. I have an Anywhere mouse on order, which is one of the ones that has "unifying," so I'm delighted with the idea. Not only fewer cords, but also fewer USB dongles. Life is good. Logitech K350 2.4Ghz Wireless Keyboard - Wireless - Cordless - Ergonomic Keyboard - Logitech'
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