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Could someone please, please explain to me the benefit of bluetooth over RF for keyboards and mice?


I don't know a single laptop with integrated RF electronics to talk to a keyboard or mouse. However, bluetooth seems to be available as an internal option on nearly all laptops now. Being that my two daily use systems are now both laptops, this is very important to me. The less cables I need to plug in, the better. An RF keyboard/mouse for me would still mean a USB cable going to the laptop.

In my personal experience with Logitech RF trackballs, and now Logitech and Apple bluetooth devices, bluetooth has a much better range. The RF trackball started acting odd more then 6 feet away from the receiver, and that was with a fully charged battery. Bluetooth, I can place my gaming wintendo brick near my HDTV, and game with no range issues at 12 feet easially. The range is also not reduced due to low batteries, it either works or the batteries die.

The 4 AA batteries the DiNovo keyboard use have lasted me 4 months now under heavy use. The MX900 goes through the 2 AA batteries in a few days use, but they are NiMH, and rechargable without removing them in the included base. Bluetooth 1.2 helps a bit on battery use, and the newer 2.0 is an even bigger improvement, though I don't know of any 2.0 keyboards/mice out yet. My DiNovo package is 1.2.

Lag time as far as a response when the device is asleep seems to depend heavially on the computer. My Apple Keyboard and MX900 experience very little noticible delays when waking up, and the keyboards typing all gets sent when on the Powerbook. I do notice longer delays and usually one or two dropped keys on my Dell wintendo, but still nothing approaching 10 seconds.

Oh, one nice thing about the Logitech Bluetooth stuff that includes the bluetooth base. No software is needed at all to support the mice and keyboards. You simply attach the base to the USB or PS/2 port, proceed with the connect cycle all the RF products use, and it works in Windows, Linux or the BIOS. Loading the software allows the bluetooth hub to be used for other bluetooth devices, and to connect the keyboard and mouse is a more secure way using bluetooth encryption. The base station does this by acting like a USB hub with 3 devices attached, a USB HID Mouse, a USB HID keyboard, and a USB Bluetooth radio.

Oh, and the Apple bluetooth keyboard does have a caps-lock LED on the keyboard. And a feature I wish other devices had, an on/off switch.