My thoughts on the keyboard.

First, the negatives: 1) It doesn’t have a standard number pad. Instead of finding 0 on the bottom you find the direction keys. 2) The Home End Del block is not located at the normal same place; it actually took me a bit to find them. 3) The tactile feedback is only so so, and the side pad could use a couple marks like the F and J keys have, to allow for better on the fly finger position adjustments. (I would have to say one on the 3 key would be great)

Now the positives: 1) The backlight has 3 separate colors. (My girlfriend loves this) 2) You can turn OFF the back light. (My girlfriend loves this even more, since a super intense keyboard light, aka my Saitek Eclipse Keyboard, is no longer keeping her awake.) 3) The offset Control pad is really awesome for FPS style games. The amount of control gained through extra hotkeys is significant, and bestow a slight advantage. 4) In the same vein, the chance of fat fingering a key is significantly reduced because all of the meta-keys are separated. 4) All the hot keys work without having drivers installed. 5) All keys are fully customizable, including multi key presses or combinations. E.G. you can make it so whenever you press a certain key, it will type E, G, Shift-A, pause for a period of time, G. (oh the possibilities, imagine the trash talk macros in a typical FPS, or the wow macros.)

And a review: I, personally, am an ESDF gamer, not a WASD gamer. this puts me into a bit of a hard spot when trying to use this type of keyboard, mainly because all of the default hotkeys are shifted over one when I go to use them on the normal portion of the keyboard. Luckily this is easily remedied by installing the included software. (I actually just downloaded it, since I was lazy to run downstairs and get the box) Once installed, you can setup the default key layout however you like; you can actually adjust any key, not just the side pad. For example you could completely change the layout of the keys to match a Dvork keyboard instead of being the standard QWERTY. As for actual gaming, it was the most convenient setup I had ever used. Typically I can only go up to about 4 or 5 without having to look down, with this layout I can actually press any number key without looking down, and with improved accuracy. (This is great for games like WOW where you have the entire number row assigned to useful abilities) Overall I would give the keyboard an A- for usability and functionality and a B- on looks and feel. (It would gain a couple points in both areas if the num pad was actually normal but I imagine the extra space required for the arrows would make the keyboard just a bit too long)