Belkin F8U1500 IR Universal Wireless Keyboard

• Wireless connectivity
• Generous key spacing and comfortable key travel
• Quick-start keyboard application keys
• Works with most Palm devices and Pocket PCs
• Universal IR Wireless

I have been using pda's for 6 years and most people use them because they aren't sitting at a desk.My current one is the Ipaq 2210/2215 (love it). My first pda was the palm vIIx and I had their portable keyboard. The pda had to attach to it, but it always worked every key! Great for the hotel stay or any desk.

With this Belkin unit you first have to update your driver (go to the Belkin website). You may have to uninstall other keyboard software first. Some PDA's have the ability to turn the screen sideways in Word or Excel which is good. Mine doesn't and the only way to get it to line up is to sit my pda in the FLIMSY holder UPSIDE down. Trying to line up your pda to the infrared using the adjustable metal shield is difficult. Even when I turned my pda upside down half the keys wouldn't work. If you wasted enough time reading this then I may have saved you $$$ and headache. I won't even offer to sell mine.

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I had to check the package to make sure we are all talking about the same keyboard here, as I have had a very different experience with this item.

I received it. I opened it. I added a battery, inserted the CD-Rom, installed the drivers and that was it. Works fine.

My PDA is an ipaq 1935, which is not too different from the 1940 mentioned below. The stand has a mirror that rotates on a arm to where the IR is located (on the side on this device). You don't need to lay it flat in landscape mode (which an ipaq 1935 doesn't naturally have) or anything like that. The CD-Rom contains drivers for both 2002 and 2003 operating systems. No other downloads are necessary or encouraged.

Clearly, the design has been improved.

The stand that holds the PDA is not sturdy enough to stay upright in a car crash or on horseback but I see nothing wrong with it. The keyboard may have larger or smaller keys than other designs but there's hardly a learning curve, you get used to it quickly. It allows me to type quickly and accurately.

Anyone using a compatible device that doesn't seem to work should take a good look in the mirror not at themselves, but at the one on the PDA stand. IR means light, so proper alignment is central to good performance. It swivels, it extends, it just takes a bit of common sense.

So, to sum up: the age of the reviews below indicate the keyboard must have been updated, because all the drivers are there and no strange instructions are provided or needed. It works, it's cheap, it lets you type on your PDA.

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I took the keyboard out of the box, installed a AAA battery (which is supposed to last 360 hours i.e. 45 days of steady typing), then installed the keyboard software on my Sony Clie SJ22. I got it working with the Palm-based word processor WordSmith within 10 minutes. There is no quick start document so you must install the software and manual and print it out. It is about 70 pages and covers all the function keys, installation, etc.

The instructions are a little vague about initial setup. You cannot just position the keyboard anywhere but rather there is a stand that allows you to place your PDA almost vertical and then you must adjust the mirror so that your PDA can receive the signals from the IR light on the keyboard that is above the 5 key. Don't worry if the IR light bulb on the keyboard does not appear to be on. Infrared light is not visible to the naked eye.

Once the unit is set up you press both of the shift keys at the same time and if and when the PDA receives a signal, it displays a small red icon at the bottom of the screen. If you don't get the red icon, reposition the mirror and/or the PDA stand. Once you see the red icon, you are ready to type. However, you can't be moving the stand or the PDA around or you can lose the connection.

If you ever find you can't get the connection, make sure to go into the keyboard software and enable the keyboard. I pressed the function key combination to rotate the screen and since WordSmith does not support rotation, the unit froze and the Belkin keyboard software (on the Clie) was not enabled after the reset so I went back and enabled it and it was okay.

There is no need to pound the keyboard. You can just touch the keys and they respond nicely. I use my right thumb but you can also use your left thumb for a space. I have fairly large hands but am quickly getting use to the keys. I would say I can type about 80-85 % as fast as I can with a regular keyboard. With a little practice I am sure I will be close to 100%.

The keys and their placement is much the same as the standard QWERTY keyboard but of course all the keys are a little small. As with other keyboards, the F and J keys have small protrusions which allow you to find the home keys without looking.

The space bar is split down the middle, which gives your two space bars.

Each key is about 1/2 " by 1/2 ". The unit (unfolded) is 10 ½ by 3 ¾ and a little more than ½ inch thick. It folds in half to 5 ¼ inches long and weighs in at about a½ a pound, however, that does not bother me as It feels quite sturdy.

There are 4 special shortcut keys on the right hand side which bring up the TODO the ADDRESS and APPOINTMENT Calendar and MEMOS

Together with the Function key, these keys also give you Find, Home, Calculatir, and the drop down menus from the application you are in. If there is more than one drop down menu you can use the arrow keys to navigate through them.

There are also many other keys that work together with the function key and which are accessed by pressing the FN key + one other keys which do the following: DONE, DELETE, PAGE UP, PAGE DOWN, CANCEL, OFF, OK and TODAY/NEW and a few other things.

The combination FN + * toggles the Clie's screen between mono mode and color.

The keyboard comes with a three year warranty which is quite impressive.

I also want to point out that before I purchased this unit at amazon.com, I sent a note to Belkin technical support to ask them if the Sony Clie SJ 22 was compatible with their keyboard as someone had posted a review saying it was not.

Support emailed me the next day and said it was compatible, and that the person who wrote the review must have had the wrong driver.

I don't think that was her problem. The stand and he mirror must be set up properly. A battery must be put in. Software must be installed on the PC and then synced to put the keyboard software on the PDA. I used the software that came on the CD Rom that came with the keyboard.

There are a few drawbacks that may or may not be unique to the Sony Clie.

1) The caps lock seems to go on from time to time and I am not sure whether that is because I am inadvertently touching it by accident or not.

2) Every now and then a key starts repeating but if you press any key when it does this, it will stop the repeating. This may be the fault of the WordSmith program. In fact both may be, I am not sure.

(Downloading and installing the latest driver did not correct these two anomalies).

I give it 4 stars because of the 2 drawbacks I mentioned above. I can live with them because the only thing I need my stylus for anymore is to run a non standard Palm program.

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Belkin's website documentation is wildly out of date and muddled so it was difficult to know if this keyboard would work with an Axim X51V PPC with ActiveSync 4.2 and WM5.0. But, after a lot of effort, I found it did. (I downloaded the Windows CE 2005 driver). Belkin have really shot themselves in the foot over all this...

Although the PPC stand is very flimsy (the Stowaway one looks much better, and apparently has a better arrangement for beaming) the Belkin has the great advantage of a proper row of number keys at the top. It's a neat little keyboard, and all in all I am very satisfied. Leaving aside the compatibility list and driver problems, I can't understand what all the whingeing is about.

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I'm using this keyboard with a Zodiac that defaults to portrait mode and it works fine. It's VERY compact and portable, tho, some sort of slip case would have been a nice touch. Battery life on a Zodiac is definitely shortened so, be sure to disable the keyboard drivers when you're not using it. I even managed to find free third party Dvorak layout drivers for it.