I'm usually very careful in what I buy, so I don't have many things come to mind. I've bought a lot of stuff as part of tech experiments for work that were awful, but since that wasn't my own money, I don't count them. I got a Lenovo Tab M8 last year to replace an older LG tablet that died off. I've used many Lenovo laptops over the years and almost always had good experience with them. This particular M8 tablet is also the revised second-gen version with an updated CPU, so you would expect it to have the bugs worked out. I have no idea why it's so slow and unresponsive most the time. It's okay for watching streaming video, but not much else.
ratfink wrote on 2022-11-27, 12:34:
Nostromo keypad N50 - really could not get on with it
Microsoft Strategic Commander - likewise
I still have my MS SC from 20ish years ago, and got a Razer Orbweaver a few years back. Devices like these can have a very steep learning curve, depending on how you use it. The easiest way I found was to not think in terms of keys ( ok, this button is W key, this one is E key, ... ) but instead treat the keys as functions ( this key is to open my map, this one opens quest log, this one crouches, ... ). Then I'd try to use similar mapping schemes on multiple games and just remap keys/profiles to match as best I could. The SC's biggest drawback was too few buttons. It really needed at least two more for your pinky, and preferably a third button row for 8-12 top buttons instead of only 6. And having the whole top half shift around was rather useless. I know it was supposed to be for moving the map, but it was way too easy to accidentally move. A hat switch for the thumb would've been much better. I tried using the SC for first-person action games, but with only two rows of buttons, it wasn't enough.
My StarCraft profile went something like this:
Top button profile, using no thumb shift, was for most used keys. Keyboard shortcuts for attack, patrol, stop, shift and ctrl keys for selection modification.
The shift profiles were mostly for making units and buildings ( top row units, bottom row buildings ). First shift was infantry ( marine, firebat, medic ) and most common buildings ( supply depot, bunker, turret ). Middle shift was for land mech units ( vulture, goliath, siege tank ) and resource buildings ( CC, refinery, ). Bottom shift made air units ( wraith, dropship, valkyrie ) and unit production buildings ( barracks, factory, starport ).
The Orbweaver was a big challange to learn how to use because having so many more buttons and controls was daunting. But once I got it down I couldn't play games any other way. You learn tricks like keeping movement keys on every level of a profile's shift levels so you can shift to a different keymap without needing to stand still in game. A few games I played allowed mapping key combos, like ctrl or shift plus another key. I started mapping the shift, ctrl, and alt keys to mouse thumb buttons so I could do ad-hoc key combos in game. For example, if a game used to 1-0 number keys for switching weapons or using abilities, I'd change the 6-0 keys to shift+1-5. Then, since I always had 1-5 keys mapped to the top row of the Orbweaver, I could use the 6-0 keys faster. Works great for reassigning number groups in Homeworld and StarCraft as well.