A cool little keyboard

The slate is nice. But I’m a touch typist. There are times (like when I’m updating this blog) that I must pound away. Difficult to do with a stylus or a fingertip on an onscreen keyboard.

Solution? Well, I couldn’t find a folding bluetooth (wireless) keyboard in stock and there were few choices. And for a guy that doesn’t care if Zappos.com has an easy return policy, I wanted to SEE they keyboard before buying it.

Oddly enough – Microsoft to the rescue. Staples has their new bluetooth “compact” wireless keyboard. It includes a separate numeric keypad. $89. Not bad, I thought. But, I don’t need the numeric keypad and the keyboard itself wasn’t as compact as I would have liked.

Office Depot introduced me to a second option. The new Microsoft Arc keyboard. It’s not bluetooth, but it is wireless. This means that I have to plug a miniature wireless usb transceiver into the only usb port on the slate. $59. I can live with that. I don’t use the USB port often and can do without it when I want to use the keyboard. The transceiver is very small, so I can leave it in the slate’s usb port. They keyboard is small, but they keys are spaced out enough to touch type – unlike the keyboards on most netbooks (those sub $300 miniature notebooks). And it even comes with a sleeve to store it in when I don’t need it.

Thanks, um….Microsoft. Consider me impressed (although a bluetooth version of the Arc would be nicer still!). And a folding version…well….

See the Arc at http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=120

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