Matias is well known these days for their Tactile Pro Mac keyboard. Its uses mechanical keys and kind of addresses a lot of the problems that some users have with the Apple keyboard. Things like the function keys not being spaced into groups.

However, their web site is pushing this new USB 2.0 Keyboard. They have a Mac only version and a Mac/PC version. Its closer to a full size keyboard that I have been using for years now. I also liked the idea of a USB 2.0 hub on my keyboard. So, I ordered two. One for the office and one for the house.

I got them, unpacked one and hooked it up. Well, at this point, I see the funky dual USB cable. One is a USB 1.1 cable and the other is a 2.0 cable. I then realize that the keyboard nor its hub is 2.0. There is a single port on top of the keyboard that is USB 2.0. So, basically, there is a USB 2.0 cable embedded to the keyboard. That's it. I looked at the web site and sure enough, at the bottom of the page it mentions all this. However, both there and in the docs, they show a little more hospitable cable. So, on that I was willing to live and learn.

So, I started typing. The first thing I noticed was that the keys were a little small. The number pad and other keys like the F-keys were normal sized. My hands did not find the cursor keys or the page up, page down group very easily. I chalked all this up to having a new keyboard. The more I used it however, the more I felt the quality of the keys was not what I was used to. Still, I pushed on.

A day went by and I noticed that one "feature" of the keyboard was really starting to annoy me. Their innovation on this keyboard was to move the caps lock key from the normal spot and cram it on the lower right side with the command, option and control key. In the place of the normal caps lock is an extra control key. WTF!?!? This became very annoying. I am a programmer, so, I come across things that are all upper case more than say a writer or graphic designer would. This was the last straw for me. I am sending them back.



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