New Mouse & Keyboard

14:58.39 - Friday 21st January 2005   (Link to This Entry)

I've taken delivery of the Logitech Dinovo Bluetooth Cordless Media Desktop v2.0 keyboard and mouse and I gotta say it's the most stylish, sweetest and thinnest damned keyboard I've ever seen in my life. The only way this thing could be thinner is if you painted it onto my desk - oh man!

First impression was that I was missing something, like maybe the bottom half of the keyboard and wotnot, but it's all there right enough. It's as comfy as my laptop keyboard but still has that nice new textured feel to the keys. I would estimate that the surface of the keys is maybe 1cm from my desk surface - nice!

The seperate number pad is a little odd: It's the same size as the keyboard in height and matches the lines perfectly, but it's a good 10cm wide, which make it just a little too much to hold in one hand. Although it works well as a calculator and a remote control for the media player, it will take more getting used to than the main keyboard.

The mouse is something else. For right-handed people only, it is contoured to follow your hand almost perfectly. Buttons are positioned nicely just above the thumb as well as above and below the mousewheel. The only thing I don't like is the 3rd-button click of the wheel itself - it's a little spongy, not defined enough.

The whole kit reeks quality though - watch out for a full review after i've had some time to get used to it.

Logitech Dinovo Bluetooth Fun

18:41.28 - Friday 21st January 2005   (Link to This Entry)

I've been playing with the bluetooth part of the Dinovo Cordless Desktop for the last hour, pairing as many Bluetooth devices as I can find. Suprisingly, everything Bluetooth device I I own has paired with a minimum of fuss in most cases.

To start the pairing process you generally put your device in discovery mode and hit the Big Blue Button on the Logitech Dock. This will launch the pairing wizard. Note that the wizard does not always detect available devices first go, and you many need to cancel/quit/restart the program a couple of times before it finds everything. So far though, this is the worst problem I've had.

Nokia 6230
Paird first time, and is now synchronising with Outlook using PC Sync. The old 'no contacts' bug still seems to be affecting the SMS Messaging app, but I'll no doubt find my way around that before too long - I did before.

Dell Axim X30
Connected without problems again, and it now sychronising over Bluetooth using Microsoft Activesync 3.8 - again, no problems at all. I wonder if I can browse the Internet using the Bluetooth connection, since this will use less battery power than the WiFi, although it will have a shorter range.

Plantronics M3000 Headset
This one needed a couple of tried to connect, but I can now listen to MP3s (albeit in one ear only) via MediaPlayer. Even better, the track titles appear on the LCD screen of the Media Pad. Sound is pretty terrible, but what can you do? I have yet to try it with MSN, Skype or Ventrilo but it should be fine.

TomTom GPS Antenna
Big suprise here! This took 2-3 attempts to pair but it went through fine in the end and AutoRoute is now showing an icon representing the location of my house - excellent!