A New Adventure

Testing - ViewSonic Wireless Keyboard and Mouse COmbo - CW2206

Inspite of having a laptop with both touchpad and pointer, I finally decided to buy myself a Keyboard and a Mouse. Keyboard was not so necessary but then got a good deal. With every good deal there is a freebie - A worry that will it last?

I had three options to choose from. - A wired keyboad and mouse, A high cost wireless keyboard and mouse and A cheap wireless keyboard and mouse. I decided no to go for the wired one, partly because I have never used a wireless mouse and keyboard and it was exciting to have one, and partly they were not very cheap compared to the cheap wireless version.

Logitech and microsoft rules the market in the wireless segment. They have both high end and the low end versions and I have still not been able to figure out, what are the exact differences between the two. By highend I mean around $80 and low end implies <$40. My requirements after the initial survey were well defined. I needed a wireless version of (ranked acc. to priority)

1. Optical mouse
2. The usual arrangement of 2x3 (Ins-Home-Pg Up) and (Del-end-Pg Dn) : Yes this is a concern, cus back at IIT I had ordered a microsoft keyboard and it had a 3x2 version of it which really was a pain.
3. <$40 incl. shipping and tax.
4. Black colur.

I tried and I tried hard but just did not find one that meet all the requirements. God knows what has bitten Microsoft and Logitech, they dont make a keboard with the usuall sytle of Insert-Del combination. They rotate it 90 deg probably to save space. There was the Logitech 110 (~$37 with shipping) with great reviews and satisfying all the requirements but that one. Finally I found the Viewsonic Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo CW2206 on Amazon for a price of $27 incl. tax and shipping. This was the deal I was looking for but I was not able to find any reviews for it. With my fingers crosses I just ordered it.

First Impressions: The make does not seem too sturdy, with seemingly lower quality plastic. The keboard lacks any indicators, not even to tell if its on or off. The initial synchronization was simple enough and as I am typing on it, the response seems good. The mouse also has good precesion. The range is fantastic > 3 meters (beyond that you cant even see the text). However, most of the reviews for other wirless combos talked about the battery life and that many of them stopped working in few weeks. Lets see!

posted by Nikhil @ 1:03 PM