Keyboard Reviews

This product is junk, due to a cheap connector that broke the first time I tried to remove it form my Visor Pro. The keyboard wouldn't work at all when first installed, then worked intermittently with much adjusting of the position of the keyboard after the connector was cracked. A really disappointing dud.

The ThumbPad is very lightweight, but seems quite durable. The Visor slides into a nice solid dock with the ThumbPad, unlike other mini-keyboards I've seen where the connection is very tenuous, and you have to be really careful to support the unit to avoid putting any weight on the connection. With the ThumbPad the can just hold the keyboard, which easily supports the weight of the Visor for comfortable typing.

The keyboard layout has a pretty big flaw. There's only one shift key, at the lefthand side. Would including a shift key on the right side as well have increased the size of the unit by that much? Punctuation is accessed using the "function" key, and, you guessed it, there's only one, on the lefthand side, right next to the quotation mark and apostrophe, making it very awkward to type these symbols. If there were shift and function keys on each side, you wouldn't have to shift your grip on the ThumbPad and it would be much more comfortable.

My biggest frustration with the ThumbPad is a non-fatal but annoying bug. If the ThumbPad is idle too long (on the order of ten seconds), the PDA stops accepting input from the keypad. I have to turn off the PDA, and turn it back on by pressing a key on the ThumbPad, and then I can continue typing normally. My email to tech support has not yet been returned (though it's only been a few days). I had a similar small bug with a different Targus keyboard in the past, which was never resolved, so I think I'll be avoiding their products in the future (when possible--the Visor user doesn't have a LOT of options for peripherals!)

The Targus ThumbPad is an external thumbboard that attaches to your Palm via the Universal Connector at the bottom. Rather than covering the buttons and Graffiti area, it extends a couple of inches beneath the handheld, which amazingly rests firmly in place. The ThumbPad is made of plastic and is very light.

It's not nearly as functional as the full-size folding keyboards -- useful extra keys like "New" and "OK" aren't there, but that's to be expected with a keyboard this size. More perplexing, however, is the absence of parenthesis keys. You do have to reach for the stylus and the Palm's own buttons from time to time, and you must resist the temptation to use the ThumbPad's directional keys in the Apps menu -- they don't page up and down.

The fact that the ThumbPad flares outward from the Palm's base gives the keyboard more room and allows the keys to be bigger than the keys that PDAs with built-in thumbboards have. Key action is very nice, as nice as the Tungsten W or C (but with more room) and far nicer than Sony Clie thumbboards. I find typing surprisingly quick. I would have preferred to see sticky Shift, Fn and Control keys, like some built-in thumbboards, since holding down two keys at once is awkward on a keyboard of this type.

Overall I'm quite pleased with this little thumbboard, and look forward to using it to send SMS when my Palm Bluetooth card arrives.

This review was drafted on a Palm m505 using the ThumbPad.

This product is junk, due to a cheap connector that broke the first time I tried to remove it form my Visor Pro. The keyboard wouldn't work at all when first installed, then worked intermittently with much adjusting of the position of the keyboard after the connector was cracked. A really disappointing dud.

The ThumbPad is very lightweight, but seems quite durable. The Visor slides into a nice solid dock with the ThumbPad, unlike other mini-keyboards I've seen where the connection is very tenuous, and you have to be really careful to support the unit to avoid putting any weight on the connection. With the ThumbPad the can just hold the keyboard, which easily supports the weight of the Visor for comfortable typing.

The keyboard layout has a pretty big flaw. There's only one shift key, at the lefthand side. Would including a shift key on the right side as well have increased the size of the unit by that much? Punctuation is accessed using the "function" key, and, you guessed it, there's only one, on the lefthand side, right next to the quotation mark and apostrophe, making it very awkward to type these symbols. If there were shift and function keys on each side, you wouldn't have to shift your grip on the ThumbPad and it would be much more comfortable.

My biggest frustration with the ThumbPad is a non-fatal but annoying bug. If the ThumbPad is idle too long (on the order of ten seconds), the PDA stops accepting input from the keypad. I have to turn off the PDA, and turn it back on by pressing a key on the ThumbPad, and then I can continue typing normally. My email to tech support has not yet been returned (though it's only been a few days). I had a similar small bug with a different Targus keyboard in the past, which was never resolved, so I think I'll be avoiding their products in the future (when possible--the Visor user doesn't have a LOT of options for peripherals!)

The Targus ThumbPad is an external thumbboard that attaches to your Palm via the Universal Connector at the bottom. Rather than covering the buttons and Graffiti area, it extends a couple of inches beneath the handheld, which amazingly rests firmly in place. The ThumbPad is made of plastic and is very light.

It's not nearly as functional as the full-size folding keyboards -- useful extra keys like "New" and "OK" aren't there, but that's to be expected with a keyboard this size. More perplexing, however, is the absence of parenthesis keys. You do have to reach for the stylus and the Palm's own buttons from time to time, and you must resist the temptation to use the ThumbPad's directional keys in the Apps menu -- they don't page up and down.

The fact that the ThumbPad flares outward from the Palm's base gives the keyboard more room and allows the keys to be bigger than the keys that PDAs with built-in thumbboards have. Key action is very nice, as nice as the Tungsten W or C (but with more room) and far nicer than Sony Clie thumbboards. I find typing surprisingly quick. I would have preferred to see sticky Shift, Fn and Control keys, like some built-in thumbboards, since holding down two keys at once is awkward on a keyboard of this type.

Overall I'm quite pleased with this little thumbboard, and look forward to using it to send SMS when my Palm Bluetooth card arrives.

This review was drafted on a Palm m505 using the ThumbPad.

While the split keyboard may be more restful to the wrists, the touchpad is extremely awkward to use. The clicker has been moved from below the touchpad to the left of it. Since I usually use my right hand on the touchpad of my Powerbook, that means I either need to squinch my hand all the way over to the left to use the clicker -- which is difficult and painful -- or tap the keyboard to "click" the mouse; which is fine until you need to "click and hold down." I'm sending this back if I can.

I've been using an Adesso Tru-Form USB keyboard on my G4 for a couple years now. I must say I've had mixed results. I found it on eBay, brand new for .... I liked the ice color and the fact that it had a Mac power button so I figured I'd give it a try.

After two years of heavy use, I'd say that it was certainly worth the ... I payed for it. Had I payed the $80 retail price, I may have been a little dissapointed. After a LAN party last year, I found that a couple of keys had broken off in my backpack. I was able to stick them back on but now they fall off every once in a while.

Also, you can't hold down key combinations while it's booting. For example, if you crash and need to boot from a CD, holding down C won't do anything. Same for shift to turn off extensions and option to pick your startup disk. I have to keep an old mac keyboard in my closet just in case. This is not a big deal, but for an ... keyboard it shouldn't have these kinds of issues.

Lastly, from time to time, after a soft reset, the keyboard input will not be recognized. A dialog will come up saying that it can't find drivers for this device and tries to find them on the web. It fails and you have to turn the machine all the way off and turn it back on again to get it to come back. It took me a couple hours of rebooting and pulling my hair out to figure that one out.

All that said, I have gotten a good two years of heavy use out of it and it's still going strong. It's very comfortable to type on and it looks pretty cool with any Mac. 4 out of 5 stars.

While I should have been more cognizant of the scale of this product from the picture on this detail page, I had envisioned it as more of an ergonomic piece that I could wrap my fingers around and type with my thumbs. Unfortunately, it feels about 80% of the size I was hoping it would be. The keys are tactile, as they are raised, but they're just slightly too small for thumb typing at a better rate than hunting and pecking with the onscreen keyboard. The advantage of the mini keyboard is that, unlike the fullsize keyboards, you don't need a flat surface on which to type. However, the iPaq feels slightly unbalanced in the too-small unit and, rather than using the unit to support the iPaq, I find myself resting the iPaq on a desktop or on my lap. In summary, the typing speed gain isn't significant enough for me to recommend this unit to everyone given it's hefty price tag.

It seems like a neat idea, and it's nice and compact. however if you get into to a typing frenzy, your thumbs tend to cover up your vision of the keys you need to type, and you get lost easily and have to keep looking down at the keyboard to get your bearings. There's supposed to be a button to press in order to disengage it from the iPAQ so you don't break it. The first time I pressed it, it got permanently locked into the "release" position. It still stays on firmly and i can just tug at it to loosen it, but the button was worthless. typing might still be faster if you just use the stylus on the digital keyboard that pops up onscreen.

This keyboard suffers from a mechancial design problem. I have a similar SKU 90190. It has not been working since I bought it.

It turns out that this keyboard was designed for the Handspring Visor, and they simply retrofitted it for a USB connection. No problem with that, except that its design made for very unreliable keystroke contact with the number 8 and with the letters u, i, and j. Well, what good is a keyboard with this kind of reliability?

I had to find out the cause of this unreliability, and by patching the underside of the keyboard with strips of thin plastic, I was able to compensate for the unevenness of the keyboard to finally, finally, make the keyboard work. Whew!

This keyboard is excellent, but only for a troubleshooting project. I thought it was Microsoft drivers at fault!

Also, you won't find this keyboard listed anywhere on Fellowes' website. Pretty convenient for Fellowes, huh?

To be fair, I could be dealing with a bad batch. But it makes me wonder why Fellowes isn't supporting this product on its website.

This keyboard works with any PC that has USB ports. If you have ever used the Stowaway keyboards for Palm or PocketPC devices, then using this keyboard should not be a new experience. Oh by the way, this keyboard is on Fellowes website in their TabletPC accessories section.

Prepare to replace the batteries(3AAA) every 2 weeks !

I liked this mouse a lot when I first got it, but it consumes batteries about every two weeks or so. It's getting expensive to maintain and recently (I've had it about six months) it's been sticking and acting up, even after cleaning and I have to pick it up and move it around it a lot to "unstick" it. I also have the keyboard, which has been fine - not a single problem, and I think I've only needed to change those batteries once or twice, but the mouse consumes A LOT of batteries. I am going to move on to an optical wireless mouse.

I have a notebook computer and wanted a small, portable mouse. I have never had so many problems with a mouse in my life!

One huge annoyance, the cord is extremely stiff, so it constantly interferes with moving the mouse around. I'm always pushing against the cord. I've had the mouse for 3 months now, and the cord is still stiff and still bent like it was out of the box.

Another huge annoyance...regardless of what kind of surface I try it on (multiple mouse pads, fake wood), the ball sticks about 30 minutes after I clean all the rollers off. And I have to clean the rollers at least twice a day. I never had to clean my Apple ADB mouse which I used in the exact same spot as this mouse. And my Apple mouse NEVER stuck like this one does.

And finally, something about the driver or the sticky ball or whatever makes the cursor shake frequently for no apparent reason. This obviously interferes with screensavers and sleep.

Overall, this mouse is awful. I'm pitching it today and getting a decent cordless optical mouse.

this product is real small and compact, even a 5 years old kid can use it like an adult, but the hard part , it always dirty after beig use , so we have to wipe it alot , but over all, this is a good mouse

This keyboard has a comfortable feel, but I prefer my 7-year-old original Microsoft Natural keyboard, as Microsoft has really fouled up the layout of this one.

The "home" and "end" keys have been moved, the "delete" key enlarged to twice its original size, and the "insert" key is entirely missing. What's more, the F keys have been replaced by Microsoft Office control keys (open, save, undo, print, etc.), and if you want them to act how they're supposed to, you have to manually turn on "F Lock" each and every time you boot--this key cannot be controlled by software! (There is a registry hack for Win2k/XP that can effectively disable "F lock" on the PS/2 version, but if you're using USB or another OS, then you're up a creek.)

It's a shame Microsoft had to add these annoyances to an otherwise good keyboard.

On the microsft site I got the idea this had a USB connector. It doesn't, and I had to return it.

They wouldn't let me post this with no rating, so I'm giving it 3 stars because of Microsoft's website error that cost me a few bucks in return shipping. The keyboard itself looks great, though of course I couldn't actually try it.

first, the salesperson told me it will work with my new ipaq 2215 running pocket PC2003, so i gave it a try. but i should have read these amazon comments before i do this!

Guess what, no, it doesn't work. it only work immediately after a soft reset, and only under its special "keyboard setting" screen, not in word documents, notes, emails, not anywhere else. then, after i ran some other programs, it just stop working altogether.

okay, maybe it works fine for ipaq 3800/3900, but get this: i tried to go to their website for update drivers for the new OS. Their website: ... (a taiwanese company) is no longer in service! So, even if I had a 3800/3900, i'll think twice before getting this product.

This is not worth your time or money. The keyboard is horrible, the installation instructions impossible to understand, the setup procedure does not work well. I purchased two of these, returned one immediately and found the other defective. ...

This product is worthless. I returned it as soon as I saw how the product was designed. Everything about this product is poor; from keys that are difficult to press, to a space bar that is split, to the hinge in the middle of the keyboard that acts like a barrier to fingers that might try to cross it. Save the frustration.

I purchased the Yamaha PSR-290AD 61 Note keyboard. Although the keyboard will sit on this stand it is not very stable. I am sending it back. I now have a Yamaha L3C stand. Much better.

I post a bad review few minutes ago. But I just found out the screws are actually attached to the stand legs already. Well, problem solved. It's a OK product after all. I'm happily playing my keyboard now.

...it doesn't appear to be. It seems to be a generic universal keyboard stand. It therefore doesn't fit securely. The Yamaha PSR-290 has molded indentations in the bottom that the stand should fit into, but they don't. Although the stand is sturdy, the keyboard just sits loosely on top could easily fall off and crash to the floor if bumped by a child.

Also, like others who have wirtten reviews, I thought the bolts were missing when I began assembly. They provide an Allen wrench in a little plastic bag and you expect the bolts to be there too, but they are screwed deeply into the legs and hard to see - the instructions should note this.