Why I have one

I bought one of these keyboard and mouse combo's last fall after my child has successfully pulled the mouse AND keyboard out of the computer by the cords several times. You see, we have a two year old. Nuff said.

In any case, I felt it was a good time to upgrade to the wireless keyboard and mouse, but I didn't want to spend a fortune on something that I had never tested before and may well end up destroyed by my child.

Why I chose this one

Pure and simple, it came down to price. I went to my computer and searched high and low for cordless keyboards on Ebay, Bestbuy.com, Circuitcity.com, officemax.com, and officedepot.com. I saw the name Logitech coming up very often and read some customer reviews. I decided that Logitech was the type that I wanted to buy, and I began searching for features and price.

The features available on several other keyboards, both Logitech and others, were not something that I would use. My previous keyboard had several internet hot buttons and the like, and what I have found is that it is just easier to point and click for me. It is hard to teach me new tricks, is what I am getting at. For that reason several of the more expensive sets were ruled out early on.

I looked particularly hard at a very expensive set as they had the option of a rechargable mouse. I thought that this would be the way to go, but after looking closer, I realized that the mouse set in a cradle plugged into the wall to charge. If the mouse was out of the cradle, the infamous two year old would now have an open connection to the wall outlet. That didn't sound like a good idea, and besides, we already had a battery charger for the digital camera and children's toys. We could simply buy a few rechargable batteries and voila, a rechargable mouse and keyboard and half the cost!

I ended up buying this at Target, as I had searched the internet and found the lowest price to be $35. I happened to be walking through my friendly neighborhood Super Target and found it for $25.99, which was by far the best price I had found. I bought the rechargable batteries and was still less than $35 for the whole package.

Performance

The keyboard itself is a regular old 101 key board. The keyboard is slanted from back to front for ergonomics, and it has a plastic wrist pad with it. There are also three hot buttons that can be programmed to bring up the internet, email and a search page. You can actually program them to do most anything that you want, but to do this you have to install the accompanying software. I will talk about that below. The keyboard runs on 2 AA batteries, and I have had them in since Fall of last year, and have not change them out yet. This is with moderate usage of about 2 hours a day, each and every day!

The mouse is a standard 2 button mouse with a scroll wheel in the middle. The mouse is also nicely ergonomically shaped, and fits my and my wife's hand both. We have no discomfort from using this mouse, but some of that may be due to the fact that we have a mouse pad with a wrist support on it. The mouse uses 3 AAA batteries and I have recharged them twice, once again with moderate usage of ~2 hours per day since last fall(fall of 2002).

There is an accompanying software program to allow you to program the internet hotkeys. The only other feature I saw was that it will put some buttons in your sys tray that will let you know when you have the caps lock or num lock on, and therefore I just wiped it off the computer. The mouse is a USB mouse which comes with a P/S 2 converter, and the keyboard is a P/S 2 type. Both of these utilize one connection receiver, and it uses radio frequency, allowing you to keep the receiver in the desk. This is especially great for those of us with two year olds!

Moral of the story

I bought this with the intent of trying out the wireless keyboard and mouse, and doing it in an entry level price range. I accomplished all of these goals, and I do not think as I originally had planned that I would step up in quality and price. I am extremely pleased with the purchase and would not utilize the extra gadgets on the more expensive version, anyway.

Oh, and by the way, it worked to keep my two year old son from pulling the mouse and keyboard from the computer by the cords. As a matter of fact, he loves the new mouse, as it is a mobile mouse that doesn't get caught up with pesky cords! Quite often now you will be watching TV and he will either run by or to you with the mouse in his hand, excited that he can take it wherever he wants!

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 25.99