Looking for a new keyboard?

I was just trying to play a spot of Tony Hawk's 3 on the wife's PC. A while back we picked up an Eagle Touch Multimedia Keyboard.

AVOID THIS POS LIKE THE PLAGUE!

It has a SERIOUS key blocking problem. Now all keyboards exhibit key blocking to some extent. This one however seems to have exclusive cursor keys! It wont let you press left or right if youre holding the down key erm...down or the up key down (what?) You get the idea anyway. You cant move forward or back and turn (or strafe) at the same time.

Its a real pity too because for $15 this is a hell of a deal in all other respects. If all you do is type on it or you never use the cursor keys to play games* its great. The construction quality is good, the keys feel really good - better than my $80 logitech - theres a goodly selection of useful multimedia keys (or idiot buttons as I call em) and it has a very nice look. If it wasnt for this blocking problem I think I might actually replace my Logitech with this.

Its the keyboard equivalent of a fumble on the 1 yard line in the last 10 seconds of overtime. So near but yet so horribly, horribly far.

*There may be other important blocked key combos - I havent used it enough to find out.

Yes, a very commen problem among MOST keyboards. Even though some do it better than others, they are all limited. What you are really looking for is "Full N Key Rollover". In simple terms, you can press as many keys as you want (or can with 10 fingers), and they all will respond, in the ordered you pressed. A problem I ran into when my KB crapped out, and I went with the ol Microsoft and Logitec KBs. I think I went through 5 of them, all of them having this problem (I play a game named Tanarus, a tank game, in it I can have 7+ keys pressed at the same time, and I constantly had "lock ups". Through research I had discovered what I was looking for was an option called "Full N-Key-Rollover", at which point all lock ups disappeared. I found this feature in a no name brand KB (which clearly advertised full n key rollover, and been very happy with it. As far as I can tell, none of the Microsoft and Logitec KBs have this option, even their top models. Again, some are better than others, letting you have 2 to 4 keys pressed at the same time on the same circuit. Usually the circuits are broken up into the F keys, the numpad, and the regular keys. Test how many keys you can press and have the system register. My KB registers all the keys I press as many fingers I have, others you'll find restricting to 3 - 4. It's really frustrating for gamers, to say the least, when you die because the kb can't' handle the controls. When you spend $1000 to build an awesome system to have an edge on the competition, a simple $30 KB can nullify the whole system. Bah