A Compact Piece of Crap
Written: Aug 14 '04 (Updated Aug 14 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Not too expensive, allows you to move your mouse closer.
Cons: Mushy key action, dropped letters while typing, terrible hotkeys.
The Bottom Line: Don't buy it unless you REALLY want a compact key layout, don’t mind mushy, imprecise typing, and don’t care about the hotkeys.
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| tesseract's Full Review: Eagle Mini Multimedia (kb-mck-91) Keyboard |
After my experiment with the Gyration wireless keyboard and mouse, I turned to something simpler (and cheaper). Since the Gyration is the only keyboard on the market that’s both wireless and compact, I decided I would try something wired and compact before I shelled out $50 for the Gyration. What a mistake.
The Adesso Mini Multimedia Keyboard is shown here as the Eagle brand, but the model number and product picture are the same. I picked it up at my local computer superstore for $30, and it doesn’t seem to be any cheaper online.
It seems that most compact keyboards have the same key layout—Insert and Delete are wedged in next to the right-hand Alt and Menu keys; Home, PgUp, PgDn, and End are in a column at the right edge; and the arrow keys are jammed into the lower right-hand corner. The number pad is embedded into the main keyboard, with the 7, 8, and 9 corresponding to 7, 8, and 9 at the top and the other numbers arranged just below. The Adesso’s layout is identical to the Gyration in this respect. The keys are low-profile, laptop-style keys. The typing action is mushy, with most of the keys lacking a distinct tactile or audible click, and I found that letters near my last two fingers tend to be missed due to inadequate pressure as I type. It takes a bit of adjustment to get used to having to stab the keys with a little extra pressure to make sure they register. As with any compact key layout, it takes a little practice to learn just how far to reach for certain keys like Backspace and Shift. I also noticed that it has a large bump across the bottom, which means that it's always angled and won't sit completely flat. It has foldable feet if you want to raise it even higher.
The Mini Multimedia keyboard also has 14 special “hotkey” buttons across the top with web browser and media player functions. Although I wasn’t too happy with the feel of the keys, I was excited about these buttons because, according to the packaging, they’re programmable, and that was my big gripe with the Gyration keyboard. I hoped that programmable hotkeys would make the mushy keyboard worthwhile. Boy, was I wrong.
Technically, the keyboard is not pure Plug-n-Play, even in Windows XP. Yes, you can simply plug it in and the basic keyboard functions will work right away, but you have to install the accompanying software to get the special buttons to work. I quickly found that the software is a big joke. First, you are required to enter a serial number to install the software, and the software doesn’t accept the serial number that’s printed on the back of the keyboard. I had to visit Adesso’s website to learn that the serial number you need is printed on the CD, which of course is hidden in the drive at the time you need to refer to it. Once you get the software installed, you discover that the crappiness doesn’t end there. The media player buttons don’t work with either Windows Media Player or Winamp-- instead, they only work with the little piece of crap media player that comes with the software. And the little piece of crap media player only works if you place an audio CD in the drive-- how 20th century is that? Although the packaging claims you will be prompted to select a saved file if the CD drive is empty, this in fact does not happen. In other words, the media player buttons are completely useless for playing the thousands of MP3s on my hard drive. And by “programmable,” they don’t mean you can program the buttons to work with your favorite media player-- oh, no. What they actually mean is that you can program certain buttons-- not all of them, mind you-- to act simply as launch shortcuts for your favorite applications. What a useless crock of dung!
The web browser buttons weren’t much better than the media player buttons. The E-Mail button worked fine to open the default e-mail client-- in my case, Mozilla Mail. The WWW button successfully opened my default browser, but instead of loading my homepage, it always tried to load the web address, "1." The Back and Forward buttons didn’t work at all in Mozilla-- they only work in Internet Explorer. Aside from the e-mail button, the only special buttons that were completely trouble-free were the Volume Up and Down, Mute (these control the Windows volume), and Wake and Sleep. The Power button can be used to shut the computer down, but not to power it back up.
The bottom line is, it wasn't worth all this crap just to decrease the space between my right-hand typing position and my mouse. I don't recommend this keyboard unless you REALLY want a compact key layout, don’t mind mushy, imprecise typing, and don’t care about the hotkeys.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 29.99
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Epinions.com ID:
tesseract
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Member: Tesseract
Location: The Fourth Dimension
Reviews written: 71
Trusted by: 19 members
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