As soon as you plug in the keyboard, the G15 starts searching for installed supported games in your machine, like World of Warcraft and Battlefield 2. The GamePanel Manager software helps the user configuring the macro keys to his liking. You can transform a complex game command like hitting Control+T+1 into a single keystroke. That way you can manage a variety of games within the profile system, saving a particular key configuration tied to a particular title. You can also have a “work” profile, using the G1 to G6 keys to several applications like Windows calculator, email server, Photoshop etc.

click to enlarge
Figure 5: GamePanel Manager software.

The LCD works alongside the games, providing information like character stats, health bar, powers available and stuff like that – depending on the level of support provided by each game. Outside gaming environment the display is kind of useless, since it monitors RAM usage and tells the time (booooring....). Fortunately Logitech provides a public software development kit so several programmers can release their own applications for the G15 LCD display. The site G15mods.com stores several of such third party applications for free. Some have a dubious usefulness (like a virtual pet like the 90’s tamagochi craze), but others are pretty good, like a bandwidth and email monitor. Installation is pretty easy (just run the mods) and you can manage the applications through the GamePanel Manager, choosing which to leave active and which to abort.