Time to install and take a closer…GAH! BLINDED!


I ventured below my desk, unplugged the old keyboard and plugged in the G15. As soon as it was plugged in, my dark apartment lit up like the 4th of July. Squinting as I came out from underneath my desk, I flipped up the little screen on the head of the keyboard, which is proudly displaying the Logitech logo. Subsequently, I remembered that it came with a disk. I strongly advocate never using the disk, but, instead, downloading the latest drivers from the web. So that's just what I did. The drivers installed without a hitch and, as soon as they were on my system, the little LCD screen started to scroll through all sorts of useful tools. The following utilities were available for display on the screen:

• LCD Clock (Simple clock display including a date stamp)
• Performance Monitor (Utility to show the current CPU and RAM usage)
• Countdown Timer (Using the little black keys, you can control this as a stopwatch or countdown timer)
• POP3 Monitor (Monitors your email for any new messages)
• G15 Profiler (I will explain this later, but the keyboard can be set to have separate profiles)

These are the default LCD utilities that come with the drivers. I played with them for a while, but eventually I ended up disabling the feature that cycled through them and set it to manual switch. There's a black, circular button on the far left that you can use to quickly switch through the different utilities, or you can hold it down to access the utility switcher

If you're a Ventrilo or Teamspeak user, there are LCD apps for these programs which display information such as who is speaking, who is in the channel, your ping to the voice server, and which channel you are currently in. This is the most useful LCD application for gamers, bar none. It makes it easier for you to determine who is speaking rather than just going by the sound of their voices. I will go far enough to say that this was the only application I used on a regular basis other than the clock.





And then you can move into the realm of custom LCD applets, such as this one:

This little beauty is available here: G15Forums.com

It shows hard drive free space, resource usage, and date and time.