Logitech diNovo Mini: First Impressions
I received my Logitech diNovo mini bluetooth keyboard yesterday afternoon. I played with it for a few minutes while at work and my initial thoughts are that this device is pretty impressive. The packaging was nice, and not wasteful. Upon removing the device I put the battery in and plugged it up for a few minutes while getting the rest of the contents out of the box. I grabbed the included bluetooth donle and plugged it into my eee while running linux. The device was recognized right away and after unplugging the keyboard and pushing a button I was up and running. This device is made for Windows Media Center but works almost fully with linux. I believe the almost compete usage and easy of setup is because of the pre-paired bluetooth dongle that was supplied with the device. I later checked more in-depth and confirmed my thoughts that the dongle is seen as a HID and that the bluetooth signal is processed by the dongle, not by the computer, and passed in as though it is a usb keyboard (it can be paired with bluetooth enabled devices as well).
Being geared towards Media Center PCs, the diNovo mini comes with a row of media-centric keys (volume, rewind, stop, play/pause, etc) which can be remapped on my future pc for use in my living room. The only keys which did not seem to function with linux were the Start Menu button and two buttons that appear to be zoom-in and zoom-out. I may be able to use these buttons yet, but have not had a whole lot of time to play with this new gadget, as it is a x-mas present and my wife took it away from me as soon as I got home. I did find her hiding spot and show her how it worked with my eee plugged into the new LG lcd we have, but did not get to do more than show her the basic functionality before having to give it back and go outside for a while so she could re-hide it. Based upon the limited time I have spent with this device I would have to say that I am quite impressed. I am also very fond of the dual purposes trackpad, you can move a switch to toggle from trackpad to directional pad. I am hoping to get a computer to put into our living room and should be able to do more with this device and have a more thorough review.
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