The Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard  

 Over the years I've had my fair share of gaming keyboards. The very first real gaming keyboard I ever got my hands on was a Zboard, which I got from QuakeCon in 2004 (if memory serves) long before they even hit retail. Today we will be looking at the Razer Tarantula gaming keyboard. The only real way to review a keyboard is to actually use it. Over the last week I have used this keyboard to play World of Warcraft and a variety of first person shoot-em-ups like Unreal Tournament and Crysis. 

 The bubble window in the box contains ten extra keys designed specifically for the macro key area. These keys have pictures on them for easy recognition of macros. The circular object at the top is actually a tool for removing and replacing the macro keys. I've always just used a knife before! I suppose a specially designed tool might be healthier for the keys. 

 The blue replacements are actually transparent. The images are quite clear. Ammunition for reload, grenade for grenade, talk bubble for chat etc etc. 

 The first thing you notice when you pull it out of the box is how solid this keyboard is. It feels well made. Having a well made keyboard is definitely important for the enthusiastic or passionate gamer! I've seen lots of keyboards cop a lot of punishment, especially from loosing gamers at LAN parties! 

 The macro keys are a set of five keys on either side of the keyboard labeled R1-R5 and L1-L5. These keys can be modified through the interface software provided by Razer. It seems as though a macro is limited to about eight keystrokes, which is more than sufficient for most fps games. The general keys on the keyboard can be programmed with up to three keystrokes. 

 The keyboard provides a 2 port USB hub and also a hub for headphones/speakers and microphone. Although I've seen plenty of keyboards with a USB hub, this is the first time I've played around with a keyboard that also has a speaker hub. Although it's something that I personally wouldn't use because my microphone is USB and my speakers have a headphone jack in them for easy access, for a LAN party setup it's ideal. Being able to plug your headphones into the keyboard, means cabling from the PC to the gamer is much neater. 

On the very outer edge of either side of the keyboard there is a range of application interface keys which include media player/audio interface on the right hand side and on the left hand side there is a sleep key, Internet home button and graphics editing tools for rotating and zooming images. These keys can be bound to several applications, as well as using the macro keys with custom macros. 

 The PROFILE key on the keyboard allows you to easily switch between up to two keymaps for up to five profiles that you can create in the Razer software.