A Very Stylish Failure
Written: Jul 27 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Aesthetically pleasing, wireless, full of rich features.
Cons: Poor drivers/software, expensive, power hungry.
The Bottom Line: If you need to manage your numerous Bluetooth devices and desire a stylish keyboard/mouse combo, buy it and hope that the software issues are worked out by then.
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| ksm1010's Full Review: Logitech diNovo Media (967312) Keyboard |
The Logitech diNovo Media Desktop is quite possibly the most expensive keyboard-mouse combo sold in the market today. For this reason I never considered purchasing this product, until one day a friend offered to give me his set. With nothing to lose, I gladly accepted it not knowing his reasons for giving me such an expensive toy. Now I realize why he gave it to me.
The diNovo Media Desktop is certainly one of the best looking keyboard/mouse combos ever made. It's combination of style, sleek design, thin form factor, and color make it a product worthy of displaying at an art gallery. For the first five minutes that I held the product, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. The diNovo consists of a wireless Bluetooth keyboard, wireless Bluetooth mediapad/numberpad, wireless Bluetooth optical mouse, and a Bluetooth hub which also serves as a recharging base for the mouse. While the keyboard and media pad are unique products to this package, the mouse is simply the MX900 wireless mouse which is also sold separately. It is similar to the wired MX500. The mouse comes with 2 rechargeable batteries, while the keyboard requires you to provide 4 AA batteries and the mediapad requires 2 AA batteries. Though good alkaline batteries are sufficient for the keyboard, I would recommend rechargeable batteries for the power-hungry mediapad.
Asides from being aesthetically pleasing, the diNovo is quite functional and comfortable. The mouse is comfortable to work with and improves productivity with it's 5 primary buttons along with scroll and task switch buttons. The keyboard's buttons are similar to that of a laptop keyboard in terms of their height profile and quietness. It also comes with quick launch buttons such as volume control, mediaplayer, internet, etc. You can also expand legs at the back of the keyboard in order to have it sit at a slanted angle. The mediapad's keys are similar to that of the keyboard and also comes with quick launch buttons. There is also a black and white LED display screen mounted on the mediapad. Unfortunately, the mediapad doesn't come with expanding legs on the back similar to the keyboard. The Bluetooth hub comes with a USB 2.0 interface and a power brick. There is also a functional blue light on it that can be pushed to manually connect to all Bluetooth devices. The only problem with the hub is that its USB cable is a bit short meaning the hub will need to be placed on or near the computer case. But being a hub, it is useful in that it will allow you to manage all of your Bluetooth devices and also allow them to communicate with each other wirelessly using only a single USB slot on your computer.
The problems unfortunately start once you connect the device to your computer. First of all, this Bluetooth device doesn't seem to be compatible with every type of computer setup. There is no way to know whether it will work with your computer setup or not. Though it worked with my computer, it did not work with my friend's computer; hence the reason he gave it to me. Initially for about a month, I ran diNovo on my computer without installing the driver software and instead allowed Windows to manage the device. Though all the buttons worked perfectly, I was unable to remap/reconfigure the buttons (a perk of installing the software). Worse yet, Windows would lose connection with either the mouse, or keyboard, or even both at times. Even restarting wouldn't seem to fix the problem. I later discovered that the only solution was to go to the "Add Hardware" link in the Control Panel. This proved to be a frustrating endeavor especially without having control to a mouse. So much so that I ended up purchasing a wired mouse as a backup.
I finally decided to install the included software/drivers to hopefully put an end to the problem. Since the software is always running in the background, it prevents the aforementioned disconnection problem. Unfortunately, the software introduced two new issues. First, it would only detect the Bluetooth devices after the OS fully loaded, meaning I wouldn't have control of my keyboard/mouse until a full 30 seconds after Windows booted up. Second, while the remapping software allowed me to manually reconfigue any button, the buttons themselves wouldn't work when used in an application such as a PC game. This meant that the remapping software was useless and it also meant that my 5 button mouse got reduced into a 2 button mouse. So essentially, the full functionality of the media desktop can never to realized with the current available software suite.
Logitech really highlights the mediapad as the biggest benefit of this package, but unfortunately the mediapad fails in several respects. It is touted as a media center remote control, unfortunately it can only launch a single default mediaplayer. It has no ability to interface with a TV tuner in order to control TV on your PC. Finally, it’s always ON display eats up battery power incredibly quickly. Though to its benefit, the mediapad displays the amount of battery charge remaining. In fact even the mouse has an LED which flashes when it needs recharging. Only the keyboard lacks any method to determine the charge on its batteries. The other features that are included such as calculator, time, date, and email notification aren’t particularly useful to me. Though I can imagine that the mediapad may be useful for some people, I tend to leave it untouched.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with the hardware that Logitech has designed for the diNovo Media Desktop. This package along with my monitor form an incredibly attractive desktop setup. Unfortunately, I am also extremely disappointed with the lackluster software, which claims many things but fails to deliver. Perhaps if a patch is released that resolves some of the connection issues and improves the software so that I can finally experience the full power of the diNovo, I might be able to recommend this purchase. But until then, I cannot recommend this package especially for the price. So unless you have many Bluetooth devices such as headsets, phones, PDA’s, etc; you are better off with far cheaper keyboard/mouse combos. Once Logitech resolves the software issues and the price of this package comes under $100 though, I will strongly recommend this purchase.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 250
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Epinions.com ID:
ksm1010
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Location: Austin, Texas
Reviews written: 73
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
I am a college student who loves testing and writing about hardware and software.
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