Sidewinder X6, is flawed.

So I got his cool keyboard from the Channel8 contest...It feels like a good keyboard. It has a nice tactile feel, and the lighting is beautiful...but there seems to be a flaw. Sometimes a key will malfunction. The all important v key especially. Tech support was no help. There was a replacement sent but it exhibits the same problems (not the same key all the time).

So I took the keyboard apart, and to my amazement I think I found the issue. The membrane is really lose, it kind of bunches up. If i move that around a bit, try to make it all even, it works fine.

I do not know if you can see the bunching, but if you look at the bottom it is there....

My message to the hardware engineers at Microsoft, fix this. I am thinking about using some double sided tape or something...

There are a few others who have had the same issue.

Newegg had a review that expressed the same issue.

Pros: Pretty lights, thats about all it's good for.

Cons: After a few months of use the keys start failing.
The ones that get the most use begin to not register unless they are absolutely pounded.
The key right next to it will still function fine but the one you want will only show up half the time.
I've fixed my most used keys by rolling up bits of paper and sticking it inside the square hole on the underside of the key, but thats not something i want to do for every key on this keyboard to make it work like it should have out of the box.

Other Thoughts: Because of typing this on this very keyboard I have had to go back a dozen times and fix typos that were caused by the keyboard not registering keystrokes, and it's taken about twice as long as it would have on a 5 dollar one.

I apologize for any missed letters that I didn't notice the keyboard dropped.

Microsoft Community Posts:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.mshardware.product&tid=5b5f2c87-88d7-4110-8e3d-4930b57a1b6c&cat=en_US_a8bc369a-5b15-4bb0-a772-f459abd462b1〈=en&cr=US&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.mshardware.product&tid=15f593f5-ecbd-482e-8c97-f7df73a9e5b9&cat=en_US_a8bc369a-5b15-4bb0-a772-f459abd462b1〈=en&cr=US&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1

Mine works just fine.  However, I have learned that daisy-chaining them doesn't work as expected.

SlackmasterK said:

Mine works just fine.  However, I have learned that daisy-chaining them doesn't work as expected.

Obviously, it must only affect a certain amount of people, for whatever reason.

Another issue I've found is that even though there are holes on the bottom through which a spilled liquid can go through, the moisture can still get to the layers below the membranes resulting in partial or full key malfunction until removed. I tried couple methods of removing the moisture, best of those I tried was using the moisture absorbers that come with HDD packages and sliding it through the layers (parts of the layers were glued..).

Third issue I've found is that it's possible that the membrane, when pressed down head on can randomly get stuck in the pressed position. I had this problem on the space key. I worked around it by adding some wire under the key that ensures there's more contact surface to the membrane.

androidi said:

Third issue I've found is that it's possible that the membrane, when pressed down head on can randomly get stuck in the pressed position. I had this problem on the space key. I worked around it by adding some wire under the key that ensures there's more contact surface to the membrane.

Double sided tape seems to be working well for my problem. We'll see though. When my melee keys stop working during a vital time during an online match...

I bought two laser desktop 6000 sets and you have NO idea, NO IDEA, how flawed the keyboards and mouses were. The keyboard's spacebar was made of such low quality plastic that during use the tiny hooks that kept in place the metal bar that allows pressing the spacebar from the sides (and not just the center where the keyboard contact really is) kept consuming until they couldn't hold the bar anymore. I tried adding meters of tape everywhere, on the bar to make it thicker so that the hooks could still keep it in place and in the keyboard button to keep the bar in the right position but it didn't help for long: in a couple months both keyboards became useless without ever pressing the bar on the sides.

The mouses instead had such a tiny sensor opening (I don't even think it's sealed) that dirt kept getting in, even the smallest dust grains from the mouse pad could wreak havoc making the mouse unresponsive until it was cleaned with blows and pincers, in the end I had to stop using the mousepad and one of my tables was left with a big stain of it because of the mouse's attrition: the tiny pads under the mouse didn't help at all, they were way too thin and couldn't prevent the entire mouse area from rubbing the table. And that's not all, the wireless receivers kept reporting low signal even when I placed the ugly receiver less than a few centimeters away from the keyboard/mouse.

Many people left bad reviews of that desktop set for the same reasons but sadly, when I bought the sets, I looked the wrong reviews because didn't notice there was a newer revision (2.0) with a completely new and different keyboard that didn't have any of those issues. Also in these days I was moving to another house and had no idea of where the receipts ended so I had to keep those two 79$ dollars paperweights.

Logitech keyboards are made of cheap, maybe cheaper plastic but I never saw one breaking up like this, heck, I still have far cheaper keyboards from the early 90s that I used far more than those and they all still work perfectly.

If I have some spare time I'd make some photos, maybe the other desperate guys looking on the internet for a way to fix that keyboard that end up here will get some hints of how to get it working for a few more weeks, just the time needed to find another set and organize a proper funeral. Yep, seeing expensive high-end hardware failing like this is really that sad.