Review Date: 1st August 2003 Reviewed By: Clinton "SileNceR" Warburton Product: Ortek Eagletouch MCK-90 Mini Silver USB Keyboard with USB Hub Rating: 93% Manufacturer: Ortek Supplier: N/A Printable Version: Acrobat PDF (320KB)

Features - Multimedia Keys & Software

The layout of the top of the keyboard is as follows:

• Back
• Forward
• WWW
• E-Mail
• Mute
• Volume Down
• Volume Up
• Num Lock Indicator
• Caps Lock Indicator
• Scroll Lock Indicator
• Previous Track
• Stop
• Play/Pause
• Next Track
• Wake
• Sleep
• Power

The Num, Caps and Scroll Lock Indicators are all green LED's, which appear to have been sanded flat (and diffused). In my opinion this looks quite good, however personal preference may differ to blue or red for the sake of matching other peripherals.

All the buttons from Back through to Next Track are supposed to be programmable (using the software provided), however I discovered that only the first seven keys (all those to the left of the Indication LEDs) are truly programmable. The playback controls can be used to control PowerDVD, WinDVD, or the software's built-in media player, however they cannot be pointed to external executables. I find this to be a bit of a pain as I have a set of executables for Winamp 2.x that give these four options external from Winamp.

Because I have a mouse with 5-buttons however, I don't need the Back/Forward web buttons on the keyboard and hence I bound those to back/next track. Using these keys causes the software to set focus away from the active program (in this case my word processing software) - because of the way the software is written so that if you press for example the WWW key, it doesn't just open up your Internet Browser of choice, but it also brings it into focus. This doesn't happen with the Volume Up/Down buttons however the OSD may cause issues with games (the OSD can be disabled in the software).

Software wise, you don't actually need to DO anything for the MCK90 to function as a keyboard; other than plugging it in. It's HID 1.1 compatibility means that most versions of Windows should detect it "automagically" and allow you to begin typing within seconds. If you want the OSD and your multimedia buttons to function, you will however have to install the software. Installation is simple affair, just pop in the CD and it autoruns the installer, key in the serial number (from the front of the CD), tell it where to install; and does just that, adding itself to your Startup folder in the process. It also tells you to reboot, which you don't actually have to if you're using Windows 2000 or XP (Win9x Users may have to), all you really need to do is just open the software from the Start-Menu.