Product Description

The diNovo Media Desktop Laser is the most advanced desktop for today's digital world. Its award-winning ultra-flat keyboard maximizes comfort and quietness, while a matching MediaPad provides remote control of music or images on your PC. The MediaPad also acts as a numeric pad for easy data entry and integrates a calculator. Results can be pasted into any PC application. Ultra-fast Bluetooth 2.0 provides an extended range of up to 20 m. It turns your PC into a wireless hub, enabling VoIP with a Bluetooth headset, transfer of pictures from a Bluetooth mobile phone, synchronization of your Bluetooth devices and more. A rechargeable MX Laser mouse delivers stunning performance and comfort and smart power management monitors battery levels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3417 in Consumer Electronics
• Color: Blk/Charcoal
• Brand: Logitech
• Model: 967562-0403
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 3.70" h x 20.00" w x 9.80" l, 5.00 pounds

Features

• Combines visually stunning diNovo keyboard, MediaPad and MX 1000 Bluetooth Optical Mouse
• Wireless Bluetooth keyboard with Cruise Control buttons; slim design complemets modern PC cases and LCD monitors
• MX 1000 Bluetooth Optical Mouse for better wireless control
• Use the MediaPad as a Bluetooth remote commander for all your digital media
• MediaPad can also be used to display emails or IMs, or be used as a calculator
• Remotely view, select, and launch your favorite jukebox tunes, video clips, or digital photos

From the Manufacturer
Enjoy cordless freedom and laser performance. The Cordless Desktop® MX3000 Laser offers unmatched precision and comfort on surfaces where ordinary optical mice can't go. Control music or video playback, including playlist shuffle, right from your keyboard with the one-touch media buttons, or use the two-handed navigation controls to scroll and zoom spreadsheets, images and large documents. SecureConnect™ wireless technology and extended battery life add the finishing touches to a desktop that will make using your computer more personal and more exciting.

Features

Bluetooth MediaPad — long range Bluetooth remote commander
A numeric pad, a calculator, and a PC remote control, it can be used to control media on the PC from anywhere in the room. The LCD display alerts you to IM buddy status and incoming emails.

Rechargeable MX Laser mouse
20x the tracking power of standard optical, the MX Laser mouse delivers record-setting performance on virtually any surface.

Bluetooth 2.0 Wireless technology
Now with Enhanced Data Rate, to provide three times the speed of previous Bluetooth revisions. Extended range of up to 60 feet means virtually no interference from other devices.

Unique, ultra-flat keyframe technology
Increases comfort, may reduce stress on your wrists, and delivers smooth, super-quiet performance.

Smart power management
An LED indicator lets you know when your mouse needs recharging. Storing the rechargeable MX Laser mouse in its rapid-charging base station helps keep the mouse fresh and ready to go.

Tilt wheel plus Zoom
Side-to-side scrolling and in/out zoom.

System Requirements

• PC with Pentium processor or compatible
• Windows XP (Home, Pro, Tablet or Media Center Edition)
• CD-ROM drive
• USB port

• MX Laser Engine™ with 800-dpi resolution and 5.8-Megapixel image processing
• Mouse with Li-ion batteries and Fast Charging Station
• Ultra-flat keyframe technology
• Media Pad LCD supports Western characters only
• Bluetooth 2.0 EDR Technology
• Support for Widcomm BTW 5.0 and Microsoft XPSP2 Bluetooth stacks
• Bluetooth Profiles: Audio Gateway, AV, Basic Imaging, Dial-up Network, File Transfer, Hard Cable Replacement, Headset, Human Interface Device, Local Area Network, Object Exchange, Serial Port, Synch

• diNovo™ keyboard for Bluetooth
• diNovo™ MediaPad™ remote commander for Bluetooth
• MX™ 1000 Laser mouse for Bluetooth
• USB mini-receiver for Bluetooth
• Rapid-charging base station with AC adapter
• CD with Media Life software, comfort guidelines and Help Center
• 6 AA alkaline batteries
• Quick Start Guide
• Three-year limited warranty

Customer Reviews

Shows great promise
My install of this system went fairly smoothly, but it is an amazingly lengthy process, with many stages involving updates and bluetooth reconnects and such. Still, it all worked out and it never left me wondering if I was doing the right thing or not, unlike many hardware/software installations.
The keyboard, mouse and pad have all worked pretty well for me, and the media pad shows great promise as a home theater controller, but I have a couple of quibbles:
1) the mouse charging station is a piece of junk relative to the rest of the system - it's tippy, you have to fiddle to feel that the mouse is making contact, and the power cable easily falls out
2) the keyboard, on waking up, often repeats (many times) one of the characters you type in
3) I _suspect_ the software of periodically bogging my PC down, though I don't know that for sure yet
4) I can assign the keyboard media button to bring up iTunes (and other applications), but the media pad media buttong is not given the same choices for some reason.
Overall I'm very impressed with this, but I AM COUNTING ON LOGITECH to improve the software such that it sees its full potential.

Such high hopes, such meager rewards
I have been coveting this sleek keyboard set ever since the first diNovo came out a couple of years ago. I have also been a user of the USB version of the MX1000 mouse since they came out last year, and I have nothing but praise for that product. The convergence of these product lines seemed like a match made in heaven.

But it isn't. For the most part, the problem is Bluetooth. As implemented here, it's a fussy, unreliable, complicated fiasco. Devices (usually the keyboards) randomly stop talking to each other and won't reconnect without a reboot. Once the system was so broken that Logitech's technical support could only suggest that I completely remove the Bluetooth protocol stack and all the additional software and start again from scratch. This did solve the problem, but it was a two-hour ordeal of reconfiguration. I'm sure glad I kept my old mouse and keyboard around!

I have also been using a (Logitech) cell phone style Bluetooth headset in conjunction with this adapter. It works, but just barely. Same problems as the diNovo devices: inconsistent behavior, frequent disconnects for no apparent reason, frequent power cycling and reboots required to set things right.

I notice also with the headset that the Bluetooth range is quite limited. On good days I can go to the adjacent room, but I'm certainly not getting 30 feet of range. And this is true even for listening, which I would imagine is more dependent on the USB adapter than the headset.

Mouse problems are what make this set truly unusable for me. The response is usually OK, but it occasionally becomes noticeably sluggish. Even worse, there seems to be some sort of predictive motion estimation built into the driver software that attempts to cover for gaps in the Bluetooth datastream. But it doesn't work very well -- for the most part, it just feels like the mouse is moving through molasses. Sometimes, the mouse pointer wanders around on its own for up to five seconds without the mouse being touched. (I've been very happy with the responsiveness of the USB version of this mouse.)

The beautiful keyboard is, sadly, undistinguished in actual use. It's sturdy and feels high-quality, but I find that I prefer the feel of my old el cheapo wired IBM keyboard. This may just be personal preference, but this svelte flat keyboard feels, well, too flat. There are legs on the back of the keyboard you can extend, and that helps, but unfortunately the MediaPad lacks them.

Lastly, the MediaPad. Reviewers loved it; not me. In fact, after trying it out for a while I'm totally unclear on the concept. Why would I want my numeric keypad moved off to the side where it's harder to get to and every bump makes it slip and slide around on its own? Why would I want extra copies of the media buttons on the main keyboard that can't be configured on their own? The time and date display is useful, but the driver software prefers to show you what's playing in your media player, and there doesn't seem to be any way to turn this off or switch back to the default display.

Hardware = great; software = horrible
I bought this about a week ago and still haven't decided if I'm keeping it (it's really great, when it works properly). So far I haven't been able to go for one day without having to plug in another keyboard / mouse for when I can't reconnect the diNovo.

Let me recount the fun I've had with this:

I took it out of the package and was pleasantly surprised with how it looked and how it was packed; all scratchable surfaces were nicely protected with pronottective plastic backing. I plugged in the hub and used the keyboard with a wired mouse while the included mouse was charging (took about 4 hours). It worked fine without any drivers (except the media pad obviously didn't do anything fancy).

Then the mouse finished charging. It too worked without the drivers. Then I installed the drivers, and the fun began.

During the install I was prompted to update (and an insert in the package said it was very important to do so). After rebooting, I was greeted with a crash while the software finished setting up the hardware; this left the keyboard and mouse unusable; I used another kb/mouse to uninstall the drivers and tried again. To make a very long story short, I started at 10 PM and finished at 6 AM, installed a half dozen times on two different computers, and finally got it working. During the post-install (after rebooting) a firmware upgrade is applied (this is what kept crashing); I suspect it stupidly hard-codes c:\program files\ because on another installation on the same machine (which also happened to use d:\program files) it kept crashing, but on another machine with c:\program files the firmware upgrade was successful (and then it didn't need to do it again, so it worked on the original machine).

Often all three pieces (kb/mouse/mediapad) lose their setpoint detection and stop doing their special functions (e.g. F-lock/media keys, cruise control and tilt scrolling, and the media display stops updating). I can reconnect the devices and then they work properly again. Sometimes they don't reconnect and then I can't do anything because I lack a keyboard or mouse (and often when trying to reconnect, setpoint causes winamp and explorer to hang). I have found that restarting setpoint also redetects the devices sometimes.

Long story short, the software is a mess, be wary.