Quoting Cliff_Forster

How hard is it to go into a game menu and manually set your preferences? Seriously? That's what I do on a title by title basis, takes me a few minutes, its not that big of a time suck, and most games defaults are pretty logical to begin with, I normally only adjust a couple minor preferences, for example I like to crouch using the back button on my mouse, and I like to melee by flicking my mouse wheel up. Takes me all of three minutes to get these things set and saved myself. I don't see what the big deal is on gaming specific keyboards.

Well for one, its harder than not having to do anything manually at all. Also, I'm not referring to changing simple control maps for any particular game that any standard keyboard would also benefit from, I'm talking about profiles that would specifically take advantage of the added capabilities of an actual gaming keyboard.

For example, if you wanted to set up a profile with your G15 and there wasn't a default profile (as there isn't for 99% of games out there), you have to create it, search for and designate the game's .exe, then start mapping out your functions to G-keys.

With proper support and a functional profile, you wouldn't have to set anything up, the profile would exist and would already point to the proper .exe(s). While many of the pre-made set macros might not be useful to you, some might be great the way they are. Some might need slight modification. Some might expose functionality you would've never thought about that some dev support guy did.

Obviously MMOs make some of the best use of gaming keyboards as you're able to map complex macros to a single function key, so pre-set macros might not be that useful. But at the very least, they could pre-map Ctrl/Shift/Alt and numeric #1 to 6 for each cluster of 6 G keys on the G15 which would at least offer some basic functionality to nearly every MMO out there.

Another example would be many FPS games. Most FPS have in-game communication commands that combine canned voice acting with visual avatar actions, like hitting "T" or "V" might bring up a menu of common FPS-type commands listed 1-0. With good support and a pre-made profile, you might have T+1 mapped to G1 titled "Follow Me", G+2 mapped to G2 titled "All Clear" etc. etc.

Simply put, if you had the choice of a program that offered useful templates vs. one that didn't, which would you prefer?



So again, back to the original point Snarkasm linked out of context, I said:

Quoting me

Its a very powerful tool actually, the only major negative I found is lack of useful profiles per game so it takes some time to set up and the G keys themselves are a bit far off compared to Home Key position your hand would normally rest in.

Quoting some other guy

Well this new Logitech keyboard will solve that problem for you

Quoting me

No that's the problem, they've claimed support for game profiles since the original G15 but they are so few and never ever updated. Its the same for their game pads or Creative's ALchemy, they work good but you gotta set up the profiles yourself. The only company that does a GOOD job of keepin game profiles updated in a timely manner is Nvidia with their video drivers. So good in fact they usually have functional game profiles in advance of a game's launch thanks to the TWIMTBP devrel program.

So no, pre-made profiles may not be a big deal to some people, but I think it would be for anyone who sees this as a major feature especially given its so prominently advertised and touted as a feature. The keyboard example isn't the worst offender by a long-shot, like I said earlier the Logitech Rumblepad 2 seems completely unusable compared alongside the seamless support offered by the XBox 360 controller.