Hi all,
Promised I would do this review a while ago but I had never went out and bought a bluetooth dongle. I now have a mac mini intel with windows xp running bootcamp so what follows is my review. Ill refer to the "Freedom Mini Keyboard" as FMK for the rest of this review
Item: FMK
This is the keyboard I purchased on ebay. I got it brandnew from the seller. It came with a drivers cd, crappy pouch (not pictured), and the unit itself.
The manufactorer has a website at:
http://freedominput.com/mainsite/index.php
Installation:
I turned on the FMK and went into windows xp bluetooth manager. You can find this by going to start -> control panel -> Bluetooth devices. Pressing the link key once on the FMK will put the device into discoverable mode. Now just follow the rest of the prompts and when it asks you to input a passkey just input the one given to you and press enter.
Installation was a breeze but how well does the thing work?
Range:
I am typing what is in italics on the FMK from about 15 feet away,
haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. as you can see it got mad and sent about 9 gazillion letter A's.
This is the same test on my porch through a wall only 10 feet away,
haha. worked perfectly.
Last but not least a test from 10 feet away no walls,
haha. Again perfect.
I am not sure why it messed up from 15 feet away, may be the range of the mac mini's bluetooth radio.
Reconnecting:
When you turn the FMK on and press any of the keys you must wait about 5 seconds and you will see the blue light near the link key blink, that means the FKB has reconnected with windows and is ready to go. Freedom states the unit can be in standby mode for 1000 hours, but since it reconnects so easily I just turn it off and then back on.
Backlight:
Here is a picture of the backlight on the FMK:
I am in total darkness in this shot with no flash on the camera. Looks pretty good to me. The light is bright but not bright enough to light up your car. It is also really easy to turn on and off, just hold the Num key and press link. Do the same combination to turn it off. Strange thing is you can only turn on the backlight when the keyboard is connected to the pc.
Conclusion:
The FMK does what it says it should. Types in windows wirelessly and with a backlit keyboard. I give it a 10 out of 10 for car pc use.