Archive for March, 2009

Editor’s keys do exactly what they are designed to do. They stick to your keyboard keys and tell you what the shortcut keys are in your chosen program. A great way to increase productivity. In my case, I was getting to learn Avid and so bought the Avid Xpress keys. It’s been about 1 and a half years since I’ve had them so this review will discuss their longitivity and durability.

So How Well Do They Work?
After following the instructions and spending a good 40mins or so applying the keys, the keyboard really is transformed into a professional looking workstation keyboard. The keys feel quite nice under the finger tips and you don’t really notice that you have little stickers covering most of your keys.
The Editors Keys themselves seem to be quite well made consisting of a piece of clear laminate covering the printed keys.

The Bad Part?
It only took about 4 months of use to see the first glimpse of problems. The ‘A’ key which is one of the most used keys was the first to show problems. The clear laminate started to slide off leaving behind a sticky residue. I repeatedly moved the laminate back into position but the sticky residue eventually wore off and the laminate came completely off.
Eventually the other ‘most used’ keys on the keyboard started falling to same fate. Without the laminate protecting the print, it eventually wears off to result in a bunch of faded or white looking stickers covering your keyboard.

After nearly one and a half years

The Good Part
It’s been nearly one and a half years since I applied the Editor’s Keys and my keyboard really looks like a mess. So what’s the good part? Editor’s Keys provide a Two Year Warranty. Something I have just inquired about. We’ll see how it goes but if they stand up to their end of the bargain, then Editor’s Keys do as they say and really teach you how to work quicker with your chosen app. In my case, after a few months I started memorising the short-cut keys to Avid and now feel confident that once I do the painstaking process of removing the Editor’s Keys, I won’t be needing them anymore.

New Stuff
Editor’s Keys have since released some silicone keyboard covers for a range of professional video and audio apps. I’d assume these would be a far more durable method of applying shortcut key visuals to your keyboard. The bad part is these are only available for Mac keyboards, which makes sense since these are standardised.

The new sexy looking silicone keyboard covers

Update 26th March 09
I got a pretty rapid reply from the guys at Editor’s Keys regarding my warranty replacement. They have assured me that I had probably gotten a set of faulty keys and that they should in fact last a lot longer. So much in fact that their warranty period actually goes for three years. That’s longer than most equipment manufacturers out there! They have promptly sent me a replacement set, hopefully I’ll get a different set to try out since the Avid keys are no use to me anymore. I’m a Premiere Pro kinda guy right now. Lets wait and see.