Monday, June 21, 2010

Tech Review - BTC 5113RF Wireless Keyboard


I was looking for a wireless keyboard with a built in mouse. There aren't many on the market so I just searched around until I found one that I thought would fit my needs (Ahem, price).

Searching on eBay I found a bunch of listings for the same wireless keyboard with built in mouse. Most from the same seller. This should have sent alarm bells going off in my head. I tried searching for user reviews of the keyboard but couldn't find any.

All in all I thought the price was reasonable, $29 including shipping (If it seems to good to be true).

The keyboard arrived and I am first greeted by poorly written instructions, that being Chinese English and didn't even explain what the additional keys on top were for.

It said that you had to change some dip switch settings on the keyboard and receiver which I thought was odd but I did it anyway.

I plugged it in, crossed my fingers and booted up my computer. I saw that the receiver did light up indicating that the operating system had detected it as a keyboard, that was good and that's about as far as it got.

I tried multiple dip switch configurations, swapped out batteries and have tried everything I know but I can't get the darn thing to work.

Now that I have the product model number I have been able to do some research and see that it is problematic across the board. I also see that a computer liquidator had been selling these keyboards last year for $4.99! Not including shipping but even with shipping it was less that 1/3 of the price I paid, but even the web site I found that was selling them at that price people said to stay away.

S

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