Crisp & Responsive (Apple Keyboard)

Member Name: DocDan3

Product:	Apple Keyboard
Date:	26/06/09 (30 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Modern, Great Design, Crisp & Responsive Touch, Quality, Reliable, Versatile

Disadvantages: White Keys Look Dirty Easily

The latest Apple keyboard is of top quality and is a joy to type with. It is available in two versions: the wired one and the wireless one. Personally, I have the wired one as it is considerably cheaper and the wire is almost hidden anyway so I feel having a wireless one is a waste of money and probably more likely to suffer from problems with the computer recognising the keyboard.

The keyboard has an aluminium base so is of excellent strong quality and is very reliable. You can either get a compact Apple keyboard, which lacks the numeric pad or you can get one with the numeric pad for the same price. I got one with the numeric pad for the sake of it as my desk is large enough and having a Mac Mini, this takes up hardly any space on the desk.

The keyboard has beautiful white, low profile keys. All the symbols and letters are printed on them in grey to match the aluminium base of the keyboard. The keys give a very crisp and responsive touch when you press them, making the keyboard a joy to use for touch-typing. The white keys can get slightly dirty after a while and the dirt does show up pretty well. I would recommend spraying some disinfectant such as Dettol onto a cloth or paper towel before wiping the keyboard. Do not spray it directly onto the keyboard as it will get into the holes and may ruin it.

The keyboard contains many buttons useful for the latest version of Mac OS X. There are keys to control the dashboard as well as to display all the windows using Expose. There are many other useful keys such as an eject button for the disc tray, volume control and keys to control your music in iTunes. There are all the usual keys and a command key as it's an Apple keyboard, which is the key (excuse the pun) to taking shortcuts when using your Mac.

The wired keyboard connects to your computer via a USB cable. The cable is white and matches the whole Apple colour scheme. The wireless keyboard connects via Bluetooth as all Macs have Bluetooth built in (like most computers do nowadays). The wired keyboard has two USB ports on it at either end on the top. This enables you to connect your Mighty Mouse or other equipment to your keyboard, if your computer is powerful enough to run them through the keyboard. The newer Macs are powerful enough to support the mouse, cameras and other things through the keyboard power, which saves using the USB ports on your main computer, so they can be used for other things such as printers or scanners.

The wired keyboard costs around £28.00 no matter where you stop - for the compact version or version with the numeric pad. The wireless version costs £48.00, which at £20.00 more than the wired version, is not worth it in my opinion. Unless you have the money, I can barely see any reasons to get the wireless version. The keyboard is well built and feels of supreme quality when using it. The stable aluminium base feels very strong and the keyboard is naturally raised and angled at a perfect typing position with a crisp and responsive feedback as you touch the keys. It's an excellent keyboard and worth upgrading to if you have one of the older versions.

Thanks for reading,

Dan ©

Summary: A first class keyboard, which brings a little joy to typing

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