Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth product reviews

An amazing piece of modern engineering, this little pack contains all you need alright.

The installation was a litte awkward, but then in true techno-boffin style I probably did not go about it in the manner and fashion prescribed by the manufacturers, and the affiliates who wrote the installation software and manuals. So it took a little longer than first anticipated. However, it was all done with only two reboots, which could be considered remarkable in todays multi-stage installation environment.

However, despite the reasonably high scores, I was niggled greatly by the determination on the part of the mouse to remind me it existed, by triggering a random phantom movement. This would not normally be noticable, but I was trying to tape some DivX movies off the hard-drive onto VHS tape, utilising Windows Media Player in Full-Screen mode. This caused patches of the movie to suddenly shrink into a window, then revert back to true full-screen when the mouse went silent again. MOST ANNOYING! Ah well, there always has to be something, eh.

On the brighter side, the transceiver unit has a few spare channels, allowing other bluetooth-compliant devices to connect to your PC. This was great for me, because I was then able to interface my cellphone and PDA to the PC, allowing full wireless hotsynch of all my appointments and data, and with the right drivers, bluetooth modem facilities. Once I have put Windows XP SP1 onto my laptop, the bluetooth features will become even more powerful, meaning truely cable-free connections wherever my cellphone has coverage.

Overall, I am really happy to have the use of this very cool unit, and look forward to really pushing it to the limits as time flows onwards. I wonder how far into the Desert Road I can read my email? :)

It was with some anticipation I removed the Keyboard, Mouse and Bluetooth receiver from the box, the first thing that struck me was the colour, both the keyboard and the mouse are a dark translucent blue which going with the blue tooth theme is very stylish and appealing. The next thing that struck me was the keyboard layout, whilst retaining much the standard layout a few key positions have changed, but you get used to them very easily. The receiver is quite unique in itself, first it can either be plugged into a desktop USB cradle, or into a special USB adapter for those laptop users out there, and the glowing blue tip on it just adds to the asthetics of it all.

After the lengthy setup process required (especially installing SP1 for XP if you don't already have it installed - this isn't supplied either. Also all Windows 98/ME/2000 users out there sorry its an XP only addition I'm afraid) I was up and running, and was suitably impressed, although the fact that the keyboard is devoid of any status lights of any kind is sort of disconcerting and the only way to find out the status is to press a key, but to give it some credit if you press any of the standard (and one new) status keys (Num Lock, Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and now Function Lock) some text appears on the bottom right corner of you screen telling you the key and the status of it which is a small consolation.

But on the up side, another feature which I feel is long overdue is the ability to check the battery status of both the mouse and the keyboard. This makes it easy to check if you should be thinking about going out and buying that 4-pack of AA batteries, for the just in case situation. One slight downside to it is the fact that the mouse appears to lose connectivity for a brief moment every so often, but this seems to relate to if the mouse has moved recently or not, so my advice to all those gamers out there, keep your good ol' corded mouse handy for those gaming sessions, but otherwise this is an excellent addition and losing the cables makes my desk just that little bit tidier, and my computing that little bit less confined.