Well here is my first post on lockergnome. I have decided to talk about one of my latest purchases the new bluetooth apple keyboard. So far i have nothing but good things to say about this great keyboard. It is basically the macbook’s keyboard on a small aluminium slab, it has no numeric keypad and is missing the home, pageup/down etc. keys. At first i thought this would be very annoying but after a week of use i am left wondering why the numeric keypad is even on a normal keyboard. I am sure for an accountant it may be use full but for me size is a much high priority when selecting a keyboard.

The construction as usual is excellent and install was easy too, i simply needed one update to get the shortcut keys to work but once that was up and running i was away laughing. Some of the short cut keys that double as the function keys include:

play/pause, next and previous track, mute, vol up/dwn, dashboard, expose, eject, screen brightness and all the function keys are programmable to your liking.

The only gripe at the moment i have is that when running vista in bootcamp the keyboard looses some functionality e.g. the shortcut keys (volume etc) which is a bit disappointing but in fairness it is early days and i am sure 3rd party software or apples updated bootcamp drivers will remedy this problem.

So to summarise this keyboard is great, the size is ideal the weight is great, the shortcut keys are a great touch and of course being bluetooth is its main draw card, the battery management is also exemplary it powers off automatically when not in use to save power then as soon as you type again it powers on in under 1s and your typing again.

Perhaps the only other gripe is the hefty price tag at $120 NZD, but we have come to expect that kind of price with apple products and this keyboard exemplifies why we are prepared to pay that price. Go and get your new keyboard today!

9/10

http://www.apple.com/keyboard/