[irmbrady]

>The keyboard has dedicated volume and brightness keys but lacks media player buttons.

A very minor point to take away from the article; but do people actually use the media player buttons on their keyboard? I use brightness and volume buttons all the time; but I do not ever recall using the media buttons on my laptops/desktops in the same way as I would on other media device (phone, mp3 player, etc).

If I wish to switch song on my laptop, I tend to open my media player and select one which I actually want to listen to, rather than be at the mercy of shuffle.

[OnionChamp]

The ability to control your media player without opening its window is great, but you don't need dedicated buttons for that. I've been using global hotkeys for it for years, with the following pretty handy configuration: shift+alt+s for play/pause, q and a for prev and next song, x and c for volume down and up, and z for play random song.

[morsch]

Yes, I use the media buttons constantly, play/pause in particular as well as forward. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

To make this post more valuable, here's a link to the script I use to make it work with Spotify/Ubuntu: http://code.google.com/p/spotify-notify/