Ideazon Unleashes New MERC keyboard for Hardcore Gamers Revolutionary design by the gamers who built Zboard

Ideazon Inc., designer and developer of the Zboard™, the world’s first keyboard designed for PC gaming, today announced that its highly-anticipated MERC keyboard is available to gamers.

Building on the experience and insights gained from the original award-winning Zboard design, the new MERC is a powerful second offering that Ideazon has developed for gamers to meet the exploding demand for high-performance gaming peripherals.

"Following on the stunning success of the original Zboard and its swappable keysets, we are once again raising the bar and ultimately revolutionizing the way that gamers think about keyboards," said Chris Rathgeber, president of Ideazon Inc. "The MERC is engineered and built by gamers for gamers and as the popularity of gaming continues to skyrocket, the MERC will help gamers of all levels up their game." The new hybrid MERC keyboard offers gamers the best of everything with a full QWERTY keyboard and a full time dedicated gaming terrain. The MERC also delivers an intuitive user experience by rolling an array of features and functionality into a single graphical user interface (GUI) presented in its ZEngine. The ZEngine supplies the user with predefined key layouts and the ability to easily switch between them for today’s top PC gaming titles.

"MERC is an exceptional gaming keyboard. Our team received advance test units and we're stoked," said Alex Garfield, captain of Team EG who finished 3rd in the world in Counter-Strike™ at the GGL World Championships. "New gamers and hardcore gamers are going to find it equally powerful."

The MERC, retailing for $39.99 US, is currently available online at e-tailers, including Newegg.com.

MERC's dedicated gaming terrain combines:

34 gaming keys a deadly central butterfly layout, 3 thumb keys and 11 easy-to-reach weapon keys;
Sleek ergonomic Gamepad that tilts 11 degrees to the right to match natural wrist position and deliver hours of comfortable playing;
Core game commands are labeled for quick access, including run, walk, jump, crouch and reload.
The MERC's phantom elimination capabilities allow the user to deliver up to 7 simultaneous keystrokes, the most available on the market today. There are also seven full-sized multimedia keys and three user-defined "radio-set" hotkeys. Two additional LEDs have been added to the MERC, bringing the total to five, to indicate special gaming feature activations.

For more information on the MERC and a complete listing of purchase partners, please visit www.zmerc.com. To join the global Zboard community, visit community.zboard.com.