 awsome awsome awsome Strengths: * long battery life
* bulletproof RF
* Styyyyle!
* auto power on/off
* ability to disable touch pad
* Works on Linux
Weaknesses: * touch pad is a little flaky, jumps around sometimes
* no scroll-wheel equivalent or 3rd button on the touch pad
* almost no multimedia keys
* Touchpad doesn't work on FreeBSD
Summary: I use this in my living room with a diskless client hooked to the vga port of my plasma tv. The way it folds up to form it's own dust cover over the keys, and hides the keys for a nicer appearance, it's just perfect that kind of setting where you would like the use of technology without having to make your living room look like your office.
It works "out of the box" no special drivers needed on Windows and recent Linux kernels. (2.6.x aka, Suse9.3, Knoppix 4.0.2, etc.) But still not on FreeBSD as of 6.0-RC1. On FreeBSD the keyboard works but not the touch pad. I use it mostly with Linux, with the diskless client pxe booting Knoppix from a freebsd box in the cellar. It works in the bios (before loading any OS) of every motherboard I've tried it on that's new enough to work with any usb keyboard. (approximately 10 different boards of various ages and makes)
I don't know how long the batteries last as I'm still on my first set after 3 months.
I wish there were dedicated pgup/pgdn/home/end keys but between the "Fn" versions (shared with the arrow keys) and the numlock/keypad versions it's ok.
The keys are like a good laptop keyboard. They feel like good scissor type, but I can't actually see the scissor mechanism so I can't be sure. None of the keys has shown the slightest tendency to stick or hang up. Testing by pressing on the absolute tip of the corner of the space bar and other keys, large and small, they always move smoothly.
By "bulletproof RF" I mean the rf (radio as opposed to infra red) is solid. Lots of wireless keyboard drop keystrokes, some do it a lot, this one has been perfect like a wired keyboard as far as I can tell.
Personally, I don't actually miss the multimedia keys or the extra mouse buttons and scrolling regions, I just listed them as "weaknesses" for information.
The mouse flakiness is hard to quantify. I can say my HP ZD7000 laptop is much worse, and that my old Dell Latitude D300XT was much better. Some touch pads are just smooth and accurate and some are jumpy and unfortunately this one is middle of the road. About like most laptops.
It's absolutely lap friendly. You can slouch down in the couch with this on your lap and work or play away with no awkwardness. Your palms/heels can rest on the flat surface that the touch pad is on, which is something most wireless keyboards don't have.
I never even turned on the separate mouse that comes with it. I can only say that it is optical and has a scroll wheel. And that I think it's shape is both ugly and awkward to use. Happily, got the unit because I specifically need a built-in pointing device, not a standard mouse, and probably so do you. If all you needed was a normal wireless keyboard and mouse, there are more and better products out there for that. It's the built-in touch pad that makes this unit unique.
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