Home > Consumer Reviews > Adesso Tru-Form USB Keyboard For Mac Ice

I've been using an Adesso Tru-Form USB keyboard on my G4 for a couple years now. I must say I've had mixed results. I found it on eBay, brand new for .... I liked the ice color and the fact that it had a Mac power button so I figured I'd give it a try.

After two years of heavy use, I'd say that it was certainly worth the ... I payed for it. Had I payed the $80 retail price, I may have been a little dissapointed. After a LAN party last year, I found that a couple of keys had broken off in my backpack. I was able to stick them back on but now they fall off every once in a while.

Also, you can't hold down key combinations while it's booting. For example, if you crash and need to boot from a CD, holding down C won't do anything. Same for shift to turn off extensions and option to pick your startup disk. I have to keep an old mac keyboard in my closet just in case. This is not a big deal, but for an ... keyboard it shouldn't have these kinds of issues.

Lastly, from time to time, after a soft reset, the keyboard input will not be recognized. A dialog will come up saying that it can't find drivers for this device and tries to find them on the web. It fails and you have to turn the machine all the way off and turn it back on again to get it to come back. It took me a couple hours of rebooting and pulling my hair out to figure that one out.

All that said, I have gotten a good two years of heavy use out of it and it's still going strong. It's very comfortable to type on and it looks pretty cool with any Mac. 4 out of 5 stars.

While the split keyboard may be more restful to the wrists, the touchpad is extremely awkward to use. The clicker has been moved from below the touchpad to the left of it. Since I usually use my right hand on the touchpad of my Powerbook, that means I either need to squinch my hand all the way over to the left to use the clicker -- which is difficult and painful -- or tap the keyboard to "click" the mouse; which is fine until you need to "click and hold down." I'm sending this back if I can.