IBM Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Kit - keyboard , mouse

Author's product rating:   

Responsiveness
Reliability
Ease of Use
Quality
Value for Money

Advantages:	Plenty of Keys, easy access to applications, wireless !
Disadvantages:	Poor performance, can be awkward to setup

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

When I received this IBM Keyboard & Mouse, I thought that it would be a great little device, very practical as like everything else these days in going "wireless". However in reality things wireless do have disadvantages

Out of the box you get 6 Batteries, 4 for the Keyboard and 2 for the Mouse AAA Standard.

As for the keyboard it comes with good media options like Volume buttons, Track Forward/Back etc. It also comes with 6 extra buttons, which you can customise according to what you want to use them for. 2 of the buttons come pre configured for Email & Internet. Underneath the Keyboard is a button used to reset communications with receiver unit.

The Mouse comes with a Scroll Point and a Left & Right Button. Again underneath the Keyboard is a button used to reset communications with receiver unit.

Both devices send & receive their signal from a receiver unit, which is connected via USB to the system. Underneath the Receiver unit are 2 buttons used to reset the channels of communication to its device, for example there are 6 channels used to communicate, so to enable communication between mouse and system both the Mouse and the Mouse Signal from receiver unit need to be on the same channel i.e. channel 2, the keyboard & keyboard signal from receiver could use say channel 4.

The Batteries tend to last roughly 4 weeks for the Keyboard & 3 weeks for the mouse with fairly heavy use. As it can be expensive buying batteries all the time I decided to use rechargeable which saves money long term however they don’t last quite as long. When the batteries run out in either the mouse or the keyboard you simply replace the old batteries with new ones then press their corresponding button on the receiver unit and then the button on the device itself and the signal is reset. Note: This needs to be done when the operating system is loaded.

At this point you may think, this is quite a good device and easy to use, but once batteries began to run out my problems began.

The instruction manual you get with the product is very basic and much of my experience is through trial and error. For example the instructions do not mention anything about unplugging the USB receiver from the system if it was being transported for example. I found that when the cable was unplugged when I came to reattach it to my system neither device is able to communicate with the system. In an ideal world the simple solution would be to reset the channels, as the instructions state. However this is not the case. I found out that you get about a 3 second period during boot up when you have the opportunity to reset both devices, which is very difficult when bearing in mind you have to turn keyboard, mouse and receiver unit over and press all 4 buttons in order. I found that I had to use an old PS/2 port style keyboard and mouse to boot the system up to get onto the operating system to then reset the receiver unit.

The keyboard also I found to be fairly unresponsive, It is far too easy to characters out when typing, most keyboards only need a soft touch to type character however with this keyboard you need to type firmly and always check you have typed all characters.

The Mouse is the roller ball style and suffers from the same problems as others when it comes to clogging up, the scroll point is also poor in comparisons to Microsoft's, its far too sensitive, this can be changed although its hard to find a perfect medium with it.

Overall I have given its score an Average 3 only because its range of features is good, and once you know how to handle its problems you begin to forget about them a bit, and no how to handle different situations with it. However had I not received this product for free I would not waste my money buying it as my initial problems would not be what I would expect for a £70+ product. So if your patient and have plenty of money to spare then this device is worth a try but to most people I would not recommend it.