Hands on with Razer's pro|type Keyboard + iPod Dock

It's a no-brainer of an idea: Take a PC keyboard and add an iPod dock right up top. One less cable, one less piece of hardware, and you'll never forget your iPod on your desk again, since it's right in front of your face!

Clad in Apple-friendly white, the pro|type is a gorgeous keyboard to look at: Shiny, sleekly designed, and with cool blue lights on several areas. The iPod dock is right up top (as you can see in the picture), but it's not the only neat feature on the keyboard. Ten extra "macro" keys can be found on the sides of the keyboard. These let you assign buttons to common tasks or frequently used applications. Using the pro|type software, it's easy to assign them as you see fit. The keyboard requires two USB ports (one for the keyboard, one for the dock), but it offers two additional ports of its own as well as an audio line-out jack.

I had somewhat less luck with some of the other buttons: While media controls worked fine in iTunes, the volume and mute buttons did not. I also would have preferred a little more travel on the keys, though the shallow buttons are something I might get used to over time. $130 is a lot to pay for a keyboard, sure, but if style is as important to you as it seems to be for many an iPod enthusiast, it's definitely worth a peek.

I also checked out Razer's latest high-performance mouse, the DeathAdder, which I previously sampled at CES. This $60 mouse also offers the same glowing blue lights (though this one pulses, almost creepily) but its case is a cool black instead of white. Built for gaming, the DeathAdder is crazy sensitive by default, with an 1800dpi infrared sensor. As the company told me in January, the mouse's "inches per second" rating means it continues to track, no matter how fast or how far you move it. It's definitely a top contender for you gamer types.