Keyboards with 'extra' buttons (like Logitech) - Which are best? Also.. touch screens.

I have a Logitech keyboard with twelve extra buttons.
Most are for controlling Winamp, the others are for
starting programs. As quick access is also an aim of TLB,
I thought maybe people here might be into that type of
thing.

Does anyone here know of a particularly good 'extra
buttons' keyboard? What is the best or biggest you
have seen? In particular, I'm wondering if anyone knows
of add-on keyboards with these type of buttons. I've
only seen numerical keypads. It surprises me that
monitors don't have these type of buttons around the
screen.

Talking of monitors.. at work (a college for disabled people)
we have just aquired a new touch screen monitor. This is
not an old style clip-on one, it's seamlessly integrated with
the screen. Basically, in Windows, the mouse pointer
follows your finger and you re-prod to click. I haven't used
it much yet, but the experience of 'prodding' the start
button is bizarre and fascinating. Maybe it's just the
novelty, I'm not sure I'd like one for home. My finger tips
never felt so huge!

/Mark

I have one of those extended keyboards, but I wouldn't recommend mine to anyone. It's anMCK-800 from Orteck Technologies (don't worry, I hadn't heard of them, either) and it was cheap ($15), so I got it. It requires a driver to be loaded, as I assume most do, and mine takes the form of a system tray icon that can't be hidden (system tray clutter is a pet peeve of mine). Most of the buttons can't be reprogrammed. The play/pause/etc buttons only work with the standard windows CD player. It has a light that comes on when you have new email, but the driver for that (yet another unhidable system tray icon) never has worked. The buttons are labeled with text, so the three buttons that ARE reprogrammable are counter-intuitive unless they launch my web browser, calculator, and FTP client. And to top off my list of rants, there is no driver for WinXP. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to program my own driver for it, then I can repaint the buttons. But really, I think my time that I would have to invest into a project like that is worth more than the cost of a new keyboard. I'd be interested if anyone has found a really good one, too.

It requires a driver to be loaded, as I assume most do, and mine takes the form of a system tray icon that can't be hidden (system tray clutter is a pet peeve of mine)

Hmmm, annoying. The Logitech icon can be hidden.

The play/pause/etc buttons only work with the standard windows CD player.

Mine worked with Winamp, right out of the box.

It has a light that comes on when you have new email

Now that does sound cool Particularly with cable (always on.) I've never heard of that before. No doubt it would require you to use Outlook though.

The buttons are labeled with text, so the three buttons that ARE reprogrammable are counter-intuitive unless they launch my web browser, calculator, and FTP client.

An FTP button on a consumer product?? Weird. My keyboard is quite nicely reprogrammable with websites or programs. Like yours though, the buttons (4) are labelled with restricting symbols.

I'd be interested if anyone has found a really good one, too.

Logitechs are nothing to complain about, it's just that i'm interested in having more than four programmable buttons. In fact, I'd quite like more buttons than the top-of-the-range Logitech. Mine cost about £20, you can spend up to about £100 for a Logitech cordless (with mouse, I think.)

The thing I like most is the casualness of prodding a button. I can be reading a website and just prod the mp3 button (the one with the magnifying glass icon was the best available choice ) for my mp3 folder to appear. It would be cool to have plenty though, maybe as tv channel buttons for websites.

I guess i'm a bit of an addict. I like using keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, that kind of thing. Hence using TLB.

/Mark

I just looked up Ortek. They have some impressive looking keyboards.

Just had a cool thought... an auto sensing toolbar embeded in windows explorer that shows the winamp plugin when you have your MP3 directory open. I might have to see if that works...

w00t! 200th post! haha sorry.. just had to post this

And to top off my list of rants, there is no driver for WinXP.

You know they have an XP driver for the MCK-800 on the drivers page? Or does it not work anyhow?

Also, there are some MCK-800 questions answered on the FAQ page.

Cool.. thanks! It's still the same, ugly, unhidable icon, but at least it works now. WinXP can take care of hiding it for me. The mail checker still doesn't work, either... but oh well.. I can do without now that I have TLB

Hey Shapeshifter You gave me an idea, telling me about that flashing keyboard email light. Perfect Keyboard can simulate keypresses (the easiest of a thousand functions), so now I'm pondering the best use for making the scroll light flash (gotta think of something, it's a cool idea )

I could even make the light flash at different speeds (or different patterns) for different events. My email program can run them!

Now if only TLB Weather Monitor could run programs like we talked about. Then the light could blink frantically as an ice warning, or somesuch. It could even blink fast or slow, according to the wind speed!.. or any time it is raining.

Getting a bit carried away with the ideas now

/Mark

Maybe I'll make a Perfect Keyboard macro which reads me my emails in morse code

/Mark

I dunno. I have the ortek one(I have a need for the volume buttons), but I found a Versato driver that worked better. Sure, the play/stop buttons screw up, but I'll do anything to get rid of that pointless Mailbox program.