Review of the Keytronic Lifetime Series

Keytronic has been in the keyboard business for a long time, and during that time they have developed a reputation of building quality products. Of their wide range of products, only the lifetime series is intended mainly for purchase by the public. This is a review of the entire lifetime product line including the wireless and integrated trackball versions, but excluding the touchpad design.

The basic keyboard

The keyboard itself couldn't be much nicer. The keys are, when they work right, silent, but very pleasantly tactile. It is difficult to classify exactly how they feel, but the end result is a the best I have seen so far. The keys feel very solid, and do not wiggle. The keys toggle from the up to down state with only a little pressure, but definitely enough that you don't push keys by mistake. When the key finishes collapsing, it is cushioned, just slightly at the end of its travel. The result is the keys are nicely tactile, but not overly stressing on the fingers. Another words, you know you pushed that key, and you can do it again for a long time if you want to. In contrast, the Gateway Anykey, while still nice, now feels a little too "hard", I miss the slight cushioning of the Keytronic.

The layout is pretty classic. Large backspace and enter with the corresponding smaller right enter key (but not near as abbreviated as with the Focus 7200). This keyboard has the two windows95 keys, and the W95 context key. They were, however, smart enough to not include these keys at the expense of the other function keys. Control, Alt, and shift remain easy to find, and you usually don't have to group for them.. Of course, they still are not as easy to find as on a keyboard without W95 keys at all.

The Wireless option

Keytronic offers wireless versions of the lifetime series. In all cases the system works the same way. The keyboard has an IR. light instead of a cable, and you get a large box to put next to your monitor. Since they communicate using IR. the keyboard and the box in the line of sight to work with an efficient draw of power. You choose just how much power the system uses: low, which only works at distance up to 4 feet, or high, which works over long distances, or much shorter distances, if the line of sight between the light and the receiver is not a perfect line. In either case, the keyboard automatically goes into snooze mode when the keyboard or pointing device is inactive for 15 minutes.

While all that sounds reasonable, the actual use of the lifetime wireless leaves much to be desired, for many reasons.

• When the keyboard goes into snooze mode, the only way to wake it is to turn it off and then back on, or push a key. Using the pointing device doesn't work.
• On many computers, the keyboard doesn't go active until late in the boot process, which usually means you can't get into your BIOS setup with this keyboard attached.
• When in High power mode, the battery is doing well to last more than two weeks.
• The keyboard status lights are on the receiver unit, not the keyboard, so you have to look in an unusual location to see them, and you can only do so if the receiver is unobstructed. On the other hand, for the best use, you really need to keep the receiver in unobstructed view anyway.
• One of the reasons I wanted a wireless keyboard was to no be tied to the desk anymore. Mainly, I wanted to be able to lean back in my chair, resting the keyboard in my lap. While this could be managed with the wireless device placed under the desk, it meant that you could never store the keyboard on the table, and still use it. And if you wanted put the keyboard on the table most of the time, it means you will always have to keep the keyboard at or above the top of the table. Pesky IR.!

I would only recommend the wireless option if you want to be use the keyboard for some unusual task, where a cable just isn't possible, like roaming presentations. If you just want wireless for the supposed convenience, I think you will be quite disappointed.

The Trackball Option

One of the main reasons I was interested in the lifetime series was because of the version that offered an integrated track ball. While it has some very nice features, it also shares some of the problems of the Focus FK7200 design, and has a few that are unique to itself.

First the good; having the trackball right there at thumb point is a joy. As a person who writes a lot, be it code, or prose, I find the mouse pointer to be an invaluable tool in editing text, but only so when I can reach it within seconds, and without the added fatigue of reaching for the mouse stored away in some far corner of my desk. For such situations, an integrated pointing device cannot be beat, no matter how mediocre its design.

On the other hand, other pointing tasks, from file management to Photoshop and even Quake are not well suited to integrated trackballs, at least in the designs I have seen. The Keytronic trackball is particularly bad. Its biggest problem is that the ball is just too small. Because it has such a small surface to touch, too much tension is required to move the ball. The result is sore hands, and lack of precise pointer control. Also a problem, altho much better than for the FK 7200, is using both the left and right mouse buttons, or even worse, both at the same time. These buttons are located around the bottom of the trackball assembly. Simply put, whether you are a lefty or rightly, you will have problems clicking or dragging with one of the buttons. And while on the subject of buttons, there are only two. Three (placed in a more sensible locations) would be ever so much better for those of us running X Windows.

Cleaning the trackball is also painful. For some reason, Keytronic chose to make it very hard to unscrew the track ball retaining ring. You almost have to use a paper clip to get enough leverage. In all the track balls I have used, I have never seen a ring of such a design, purposely made almost impossible to remove. The worst part is you will be removing it often. To keep the trackball in its most useable state, I usually have to clean it after every few hours of use. At least with the focus trackball, the cleaning was only necessary daily.

Another universal problem with the trackball mechanism is shared with the Focus FK7200, that of wimpy rollers. Both of these keyboards are having problems with the pointer cursor getting stuck because one of the roller gets stuck. It's like the ball is really dirty, but this isn't the case. This is easily proven by taking the ball out, and trying to move the roller with a finger, and not getting it to budge in one direction. This is probably a manufacturing defect, your Lifetime Keyboard will probably not exhibit it.

The mechanical problems with the trackball in the Keytronic don't stop there, however. On my first Keytronic, the mouse buttons were literally hard to click. A very significant level of pressure was required to complete a mouse click. Happy, this problem is not evident on my second keytronic. Hopefully it was just bad luck on my part.

On a final note regarding hardware problems, after a few months of use my spacebar has started to squeak when I press it. It isn't too noisy, but it is annoying.

The touchpad option

The Lifetime Keyboards are also offered with touch pad, located just bellow the cursor keys. I have had no experience with this design, but I do think it has at least one cool innovation going for it. My biggest complaint against mush pads is having to take my finger off the mush pad, so I can move it to another part of the surface, especially while trying to drag something. The Keytronic design deals with this quite elegantly, by acting something like a joystick along the edges of the pad. Just place your finger on the edge, and the cursor starts moving in that direction until you take your finger away. A little ways away from the edge, the surface acts like a normal mush pad. This is a very cool idea, at least on paper.

Conclusion

Of the four products reviewed on this page, I feel I can only strongly recommend the Lifetime Classic. It is, with out a doubt, a high quality keyboard, and almost completely devoid of flaws. I wish I could say the same of the other products in the Lifetime Line. On the other hand, they do have redeeming qualities. Now that you know what you are in for, I hope you will be able to evaluate their suitability to your needs. Personally, I expect to continue to use my Keytronic Trackball Keyboard for a long time, despite all my gripes with it.