The Media Zone is a cool edition to the keyboard, though this isn't the first time I've seen the ability to control your CD-rom drive from one. As you can see, this area consists of 6 buttons, labelled with the symbols for play/pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, mute, and media. The dial, which is about the size of a 50 cent piece is easily turned with a fingertip, and controls your PCs volume level. The default application that opens when you press the media button is Windows Media player, and though I looked trough the keyboard's setup utility, I could not find a setting to change this; however, Logitech's website does have a FAQ that describes how to setup Winamp through a quick registry edit. I tried to get the button set up to load Winamp using the registry change outlined here , but was re-configure the media button. It turns out, that the play button is actually what the registry change configures. When you push play, Winamp pops up. Very cool. The media player controls Winamp perfectly.

The Media Zone

Turn the dial, turn it UP!

When you do press a button, a green overlay with that button's label pops up. In this case, I was turning the volume dial.

I have to admit, I wasn't really all that enthusiastic about the media player until I was blasting some tunes, and the phone rang. I was able to reach over, press the pause key, and answer the phone in one easy movement. This is a lot better then having to grab the mouse, drag the cursor over to the pause button, and hope I don't accidentally change songs or something. It also paused the player when minimized, yet another cool timesaver.

Next up, the "Internet Zone 1"

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