Home > Consumer Reviews > 2.4GHZ Wrls Multimedia Media Center Keyb with optical Trackball

Ordering this keyboard was a gamble that paid off, as I use OS X & Linux on my Mac Mini. I just received it this afternoon and I am so happy to have it for my living room setup. It'll take a little getting used to, as some of the function keys are a bit smaller than normal, but the design really does work perfectly in a small enough package to be practical without being cramped. The qwerty keys are standard sized, which makes typing easy.
As I mentioned earlier, I bought this to use with a Mac Mini which dual boots OS X and Debian Linux, and it works fine with both systems. The volume, mute, play, pause, etc multimedia keys work with iTunes in OS X right out of the box! In Linux, I used a program called keytouch, and selected "Microsoft wireless keyboard", which immediately allowed me to use volume and mute keys. The rest can be defined with keytouch-editor, or in xmodmap. I haven't bothered with trying to set up the extra file manager keys at the top of the keyboard, since I'm mainly a command line geek anyway, but I'm sure it can be done. I'd have given it a full five stars, except that (as others have mentioned) it does have a bit of a cheap feel to it, definitely not the luxurious tactile experience of a macally icekeys. But the feel is workable, and the mobility and packaging factors are truly awesome.

This Adesso multimedia keyboard is perfect for my particular system. My media center pc is attached to my living room LCD TV, and I needed a wireless keyboard with a built-in mouse. Computing from my couch - what could be better? The optical trackball built in to this unit seems the perfect solution.

I'm also particularly pleased that it has a complete 10-key pad (most similar keyboards of this type don't) and the media keys make it easy for me to control DVD playback (I don't even need my stand-alone DVD player any more - or its easily misplaced remote).

My one complaint would be the inconvenient stand-by mode brought on by bumping the all-too-accessible reset button. It's easy enough to get it started again, but still, could you make it a bit harder to unintentionally freeze the thing?

Other than that, I'm pleased as punch with this thing. It feels solidly made, and it functions reliably.

pros: nice low profile keys on keyboard, great trackball, nice location on left-right click, page scroll is great, multimedia keys are fine, nice range. nice look.

cons: reconnection button is almost the same place that I hold the keyboard, it's very easy to hit that accidentally, reconnection sometimes took 2 seconds, sometimes 2 minutes.
it is not bluetooth so receiver should be visible to keyboard, but nice distance if the receiver is visible.
sometimes backspace doesn't work, I have to push it twice, but while typing long emails I have almost no error.
I wish there was no numeric keypad, it is making it just bigger that's all.

Overall it works and I am not going to replace it with a different model for now. maybe in future with smaller size and blueetooth, best thing on this keyboard is the trackball it works perfectly.

Pros:
1) Quite responsive.
2) Precision track ball.

Cons:
1) The keys are not as soft as a laptop keys. At times I have to press hard or at an angle
(e.g., interchange Left Hand <-> RH)
2) No indication of Caps or Num lock. So, kind of hard when entering passwords

Thoughts:
1) Keyboard layout is condensed, could have done away with number keypad.
2) Alternate mouse buttons near the track ball. So, can manage it with single hand.

I bought this for my home theatre system after doing a lot of research. The research paid off! I have my computer connected to my receiver and 52inch Samsung LCD. We watch movies off the internet, use our computer for music, photos, videos etc and also some general browsing. This keyboard has a built in trackball mouse and also some shortcut keys for internet and Windows media player! You could sit on a sofa 15+ft and use the keyboard!! We love it. Do not fall into the trap of buying a desktop wireless keyboard for your TV entertainment center. Buy a keyboard that's designed for TV entertainment like this one from Adesso! Do your research. One minor downside is that there is a indexing button at the bottom of the keyboard that may get pressed accidentally which causes to loose sync with your computer and you'll have to get up from the sofa and re-index again! Minor ache, but you'll learn not to touch that button by accident!!