Better yet, you no longer need different receivers for your keyboard and mouse. The latest Logitech receiver is about the size of your thumbnail – so small that you can leave it plugged into a laptop and barely notice it’s there. The technology has come a long way from this early era.
When I bought my first wireless Logitech keyboard in the mid-2000’s, the receiver was a shocking thing of awkwardness that rivaled my mouse in size.
The wireless receiver is so small you can just barely see it peeking out the side of a laptop. The reduced wear on your fingers adds up, particularly if you’re automating something you do many times a day. Even if a macro only saves three keystrokes twice an hour during your work week, at the end of the year you’ll have saved over 12,000 strokes – or about twice the text of this article. By automating certain tasks, they cut down on repeated physical motion. You can even define a custom menu to come up when you press a particular key, which is getting into some some pretty advanced stuff.Īs an ergonomics enthusiast, I like macros and shortcut keys. You can use these actions to open a folder, start a program, or input certain keystrokes. With the exception of these, the K350’s special keys can be customized to do almost anything you want.Ĭustom actions are assigned using the included Logitech Setpoint software. Its media control keys give you the usual play, stop, previous, next, and volume, as well as the handy mute for when the phone rings. Like most consumer keyboards, the K350 has lots of special buttons. The K350 won’t give you the snappy action of a Das Keyboard or even a Kinesis Freestyle, but it’s quiet, nice-feeling, and as good as any keyboard in this price range that I’ve tried.
It’s not only easy to press, it’s also incorporated seamlessly into the whole Wave design, so that the thumbs rest naturally in its curves. The Logitech’s spacebar, particularly, puts the aforementioned Redmond creation to shame. I’ll say at least one thing for the key action on the K350: Compared to the Microsoft Natural 4000, it’s a bag of feathers. If you look at your arms while using the keyboard, you’ll find them angled slightly inward – not enough to mess up your typing, but enough to ease the twisting pressure on your wrists. The K350 sneaks up on this second group by resembling an ordinary keyboard, while providing some benefits of the more radical split design. Most people feel one of two ways about this split design: They love it and can’t live without it, or they hate it and can’t live with it. Split-layout keyboards like the Microsoft Natural 4000 have around for years, claiming to reduce the risk of RSI by straightening out our wrists. While not a split keyboard, the K350 helps your arms angle inward, keeping your wrists straighter than a standard keyboard. This shape, mirrored by each half of the keyboard, gives your longer digits room to unwind, while allowing the shorter fingers to reach their keys more easily. K, for instance, is where your middle finger expects to find it, but lives at the bottom of a “valley.” L and J are higher, and Semicolon and H higher still. Instead of being staggered in the horizontal plane, its keys are staggered in the vertical plane. The Wave addresses the problem in an interesting way. Staggered-layout keyboards such as the Truly Ergonomic do just that – but these meet with resistance from touch typists who don’t want to learn anything new. When you think about it this way, the rows of a keyboard shouldn’t be straight they should be curved to match the fingers, K, for instance, pushed further out where the middle finger wants to be. My middle finger, for instance, is almost two inches longer than the pinkie. One of the biggest problems of ergonomics is the varying length of fingers on the same hand. The wireless K350 is easy on the hands – and easy on the wallet The Wave design
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