Wireless keyboard + touchpad

July 22, 2012

Wireless keyboard + touchpad

So sometimes, you gotta do some work standing, or lounging in your couch. Wires really get in the way of enjoyment, they get tangled, people trip on them, limits your range... and for a keyboard and mouse, you need 2 wires! that's starting to use a lot of your usb ports!

So I started looking at wireless keyboard that have a touchpad on them. There seems to be a pretty wide variety of them on the market, but i've tried two significantly different models in the last few days and here are my thoughts.

Logitech K400 - on sale at futureshop (50$), bestbuy USA (40$), walmart USA (30$). Comes with batteries.

This is nearly a full size keyboard, with all the keys you'd be expecting from a normal keyboard, and it has a touch pad on the side with two buttons, it doesnt have a scroll and you can't scroll using the side of the touch pad. Pretty sleek and solid. I worked at a manufacture over the week with it, it made a HUGE difference from my previous trips where i had to walk around with a usb stick that had a keyboard, mouse and USB drive connected to it and had to unpack it from my tool bag, untangle all the cables, every single time i move from a machine to another. It changed my life.

Plus, it fits comfortably in my backpack.

One thing I wish i had was a numpad. But then again, you'd have to make it longer, or shrink stuff, or move the touchpad down like some other models.

Pretty robust, i bang it around a lot and it still works properly.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Logitech-920-003070-Wireless-Touch-Keyboard-K400/17253322

Now, you still need to fit it in your backpack, when you have a lot of stuff to carry, it can get annoying to move around. So my dad had this one that he showed me and I found it to be a different experience, better if you're not typing a lot and wanna put it in your pocket.

The iPazzPort (its not from Apple...)

I used it quite a lot as a remote when I plugged my laptop to the TV and just want to lounge. you'd have a way to control and type minimal stuff. This seems to have most the keys you'd need, i didnt find myself needing anything else, and there's the Fn key so that adds buttons. You can then just slip it in your pocket and move around.... very portable. The price seems to have gone up to 38$ now.

It feels really cheap, its super light.

Now the main thing i didnt like about it, the touchpad is not setup to match the laptop's touchpad... its less sensitive, in the sense that 1cm of movement on this would be equivalent to 0.66cm on my laptop touchpad. So I had to change the settings on my laptop. but then when you take it off... you have to re-set the mouse speed setting! So that's not ideal.