My keyboard died this morning, drowned in coffee. It wasn’t entirely my fault; my coordination has never been at its best when covering the early morning shift on the news desk.

I won’t miss it, though, as in its place now sits a Logitech wireless behemoth covered with, to quote Hunter S. Thompson upon sitting behind the wheel of a Cadillac Coupe de Ville, “esoteric lights and dials and meters that I will never understand.”

I can now control my media player and email client with dedicated buttons, an LCD display will tell me the time, date, number of key presses made (3,016) and even temperature (25˚C) as well as letting me search my PC directly, I can zoom in on images with a rocker switch, launch countless applications or websites and I even have a switch which will turn off my PC, although I’ve been too afraid to press that one so far.

In fact, to be honest, I’ve pressed very few of them. I can do all of those things with the click of a mouse anyway, except the temperature of course, so do I really need the extra keys? Do any of you use them?