Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard (Black) by Logitech
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Digital camera reviews of Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard (Black)
Digital camera Review: 100% Un-Green, Landfill in one year
Summary: 2 Stars
Besides the out of control fluctuating volume, (which happens on its own intermittently and, after much figuring , seems to be set off by bright light hitting the volume control slide), this keyboard worked pretty well. But after a year the Dinovo Edge would no longer hold a charge. A web search revealed that this is an ongoing problem. There seems to be no way to replace the battery... and it becomes useless fairly quickly. Contacting support is difficult and no answers were provided. The Logitech support forum has several entries on this issue with zero answers. That's really shameful that this thing, which contains many toxic elements, must be thrown in the garbage after a year!Digital camera Review: 24 hours after meeting and I'm already in love!
Summary: 5 Stars
Last week I realized that there was a down side to how I'd hooked up my laptop to my HDTV. The laptop ended up connected to the TV and on top of my stereo cabinet, forcing me to stand at the computer to use it, or in my lap on my sofa, but not connected to the TV. So, I started poking around for wireless keyboards and mice. Thinking that a mouse wasn't going to work all that well, and that would just be one more "remote" in my livingroom, I shopped for a wireless keyboard with a built in trackpad. What I found was the Logitech diNovo Edge Keyboard.
At $149 this keyboard is a smidge on the pricey side but it's worth every penny. It's light, it's thin, it doesn't need AA or AAA batteries due to the built in Li-Ion batteries and charging station, and it's on board "touch disc". The batteries are quoted as being able to last a month or more on a single charge and based on other reviews I have no reason to doubt that. The "touch disc" is a round touchpad but with two special spots on the disc that allow for both vertical and horizontal scrolling once you get the hang of it.
Stylistically, this is a gorgeous piece of equipment. It's sleek and black, and had many backlit icons for special functions. (For example, the ring around the touch disc lights up when your using it and slowly fades out when you stop.) And, as other reviewers have said, it even looks great when sitting in the charging station.
The wireless connection runs on Bluetooth and this is where I ran into some problems. My Vista Ultimate laptop has built in Bluetooth but I'd not used it in the past as this is my first Bluetooth device for a computer. So, I went into the Bluetooth configuration settings and instructed the computer to find the device. I'd pressed all the right buttons and read all the instructions a dozen times but computer continually failed to find the keyboard. So, as a test, I plugged in the USB dongle for computers that didn't have Bluetooth and everything connected almost instantly. Therefore, the problem was with my computer, not the keyboard.
An hour later, having read many a support document, it seemed that Bluetooth was "running" (at least there was a Bluetooth icon in my system tray) but it was "turned off". Using the function keys to turn it on didn't work since, ultimately, the laptop was refusing to recognize the built in Bluetooth hardware. My guess is that something happened in the upgrade to Vista.
I found updated drivers from Gateway, downloaded them, and ran the install program. The install program informed me that I had to first uninstall the old version. Off to Add/Remove Programs to uninstall Bluetooth. Upon reboot, Vista found the hardware, reinstalled the (original) drivers, and before trying to install new drivers, I tried again. This time, the keyborad connected as it should.
(I don't blame the keyboard or Logitech for this at all. I mention it since others might have a similar problem.)
I then installed the Logitech software which seems to give me some additional options and customizations but I'm in no hurry to investigate those since so far I've been able to do everything I've needed to do.
The only other odd thing I've noticed is the keyboard's volume control. Using the keyboard to raise and lower the volume seems only to work within a small range, not silent-to-blearing like you'd expect. I'm sure this again has something to do with the OS' volume settings and not a problem with the keyboard itself. This is also something I'm not all that worried about as I'll probably use the TV remote's volume control more than anything else.
For those interested, a slideshow of the unpacking, Bluetooth installation(sans screenshots of the hour of troubleshooting) and Logitech software installation, can be found in my [..]
Digital camera Review: 5 star product after after hours of troubleshooting .
Summary: 2 Stars
Let me say that this is a great keyboard.Maybe the best.However,when I first plugged this in and installed it there were several issue's to contend with.The first was after installing the bt dongle windows crashed to bluescreen and rebooted my pc.After reboot everything appeared to be ok.Then I noticed that there wasn't any bt icon and the dongle did not show in device manager except as a generic usb hub.Also when playing games it would not work unless running the software which I don't run because the software conflicts with the Logitech g7 mouse while playing L4D and disconnects frequently unless it is not running.But if it isn't my keyboard would disconnect frequently.Finally I read that holding down the connect button on the dongle while inserting it would make it install correctly as bluetooth which it did.But did not correct the intermittent bluescreen.What I had to do was uninstall the microsoft emulator from the device manager then download and install the Toshiba bluetooth stack and it works great after about 5 or 6 hrs of frustration now it works great with out any crashing or disconection . Except I have to close Logitech software before plaing games to avoid frequent disconnects and the keyboard is not reconized until windows boots up.I have to keep my wired keyboard handy to enter bios. All said and done it is now a great keyboard but not until many hours after receiving it and like I said above there are still a couple issues. I am happy now I bought it but I was pretty close to returning it last night as many have I've read numerous problems with this and the dinovo desktop version.Pretty sad as this has been out for quite sometime and for the price Logitech should be putting much more into a solution that they have (nothing).I always liked Logitech but I will be allot more hesitant in the future to shell out $$$ for their products after this experience.Digital camera Review: 5 starts without a doubt...
Summary: 5 Stars
I did a lot of research before buying this keyboard. I wanted to have something to browse Internet while sitting on the couch with a PC connected into my 61 inches Samsung DLP HDTV. And it works just great. Easy installation, it comes with an USB bluetooth adaptor to connect w/ the keyboard. Them all you have to do us leave the keyboard in its base for it charge. The keyboard is light, slim and stilsh ... there is no one that dont get impressed by it when I go show my state of the art home teather... Contratulations logitech, well done !Digital camera Review: A Bit Flaky - Not Worth the Money
Summary: 2 Stars
There are many positive aspects to this keyboard. For starters, installation was a breeze - a real plug-and-play experience. The keyboard itself feels very solid and is nice and thin. It holds its charge well and recharges quickly. And a number of the keyboard features, in particular the volume slider and the programmable hotkeys, worked well and were quite useful. However, there were a number of drawbacks that led me to return the product.
First and foremost, there were connectivity issues. It synced up right away and held the sync for many hours, but once or twice a day it would stop working. Power-cycling the keyboard would re-establish the bluetooth connection, but that's not the type of problem you expect from such an expensive product.
The other feature that I had issues with was TouchDisc scrolling. The idea was brilliant; Hold your finger on the right hand side of the TouchDisc and start moving it in a circle and you're scrolling down a long web-page. Unfortunately, getting it to work on a consistent basis was something I was never able to figure out. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it would not. Given that this was supposed to be a time-saving feature (it lets you keep your hand on the mouse-pad rather than going back and forth to the arrow-up/arrow-down keys), the flakiness made it quite undesirable.
The final straw for me was that after 4 days of use, it started to show some wear. There's a very thin layer of something on top of the metal that started peeling (I'm not referring to the protective plastic that comes with the new product). Part of the appeal of this keyboard was that I wanted something that looked great in my living room, as I'm using this for an HTPC. If I noticed new blemishes after 4 days, what would it look like in a year?