Razer owns a majority of my desk with Logitech handling the keyboard part, for now anyways. Now the old keyboard may be getting a boot once I dig in more on the Razer Deathstalker. Beyond being a basic keyboard, Razers new entry includes the Switchblade UI seen on it’s gaming laptops. This means the keyboard has a built in LCD screen and keys that can give vital information for games. Keys can also change to fit the specific buttons you may need for your game. Want to have quick keys for a few of the skills you are using in Tera? Simply set up the UI to display those icons and press away. They will visually mimic the icons that are seen in game.

For your non-gaming needs, there are utility functions that the LCD keys can handle as well. For example, click the calculator icon and all of the keys will switch to images that you would use in the calculator. This is the obvious next step for keyboards and something I have been looking forward to since teasers about a year ago started to surface. Outside of gaming and basic productivity, the LCD buttons can be set to quickly access frequently used applications or websites. Click a twitter button to shoot up a twitter feed, or better yet, use the built in LCD screen to show that feed on your keyboard.

One of the issues with hardware that gives custom interfaces for games comes from the lack of support from many of the popular titles out there. As Razer is launching an SDK for just this reason, the community will be able to dig in and make sure all the big titles take advantage of the keyboard. Expect to see two versions launch next month priced at $80 for the basic keyboard and $250 for the feature packed version.

source[endgadget]

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