First off, it’s important to note that since this is a Bluetooth device, the only way the OS can detect and use this keyboard and mouse is to load the Bluetooth protocol stack. The only way it can load the stack is if the OS boots up and loads the USB drivers before getting to the log in prompt. What does this ultimately mean? If you are someone who interacts with your systems’ BIOS or likes to use DOS, then using this keyboard is not an option at this time. You’ll need to have a spare USB or PS/2 keyboard handy to make sure you can still interact with the system before the OS loads. It’s a bit of a pain but perhaps someday this will be alleviated.

2.1 Installation

Installing the keyboard and mouse is an interesting and slightly annoying process. Since this is a wireless desktop that utilizes a whole new protocol, you will need to have your existing keyboard and mouse in place during the entire setup routine. Physically installing the keyboard and mouse is simple enough because there are no wires to connect for those devices. All you have to deal with is the Bluetooth transceiver. Just attach the Microsoft Wireless Transceiver to the Wireless Transceiver base and then connect the base to an available USB port.

You will then be prompted for a driver by Windows. I inserted the installation CD and ran the setup routines. The first step was to install the mouse and keyboard drivers. Once the setup routine is done, you will need to reboot your system to load the new drivers. Check out the warning message

Here are the shots of the keyboard software driver install:

Starting up the keyboard install

Select the proper keyboard

Install away

Here are the shots of the mouse software install

Starting up the mouse install

Install the drivers

This is another reason you’ll need your existing keyboard and mouse. When you come back from reboot, you’ll need to log into your desktop let alone interact with it. Since the Bluetooth devices have not been recognized yet, you can’t possibly use this keyboard to login or type. Nor can you use your mouse to select and click on items.

Once you’re logged in, setup for both devices will continue. Let’s look at the mouse. First a dialog box pops up informing you that you should make sure that a fresh set of batteries are installed in the mouse. Microsoft was nice enough to package four AA Energizer batteries for us to use. (I actually do love Energizers over other batteries) I inserted the batteries and then was told to press the button on the underside of the mouse. This button is labeled “Connect Channel”. Once I press the button, I let the setup search for a Bluetooth mouse and within a few minutes the software negotiates a communications link with the mouse. The connection is secured by pressing the Lock icon that shows up in the mouse setup.

Get ready to do some searching

Found the mouse - now lock it

Here's the connect button on the mouse

Setting up the keyboard is almost the same. Install the batteries and then press the Connect Channel button on the underside of the keyboard. However once the keyboard is found by the Bluetooth transceiver, a special number is generated by the wizard. You need to enter that number into the dialog box from the keyboard and you need to do it within 30 seconds. If the number is incorrect or time elapses, then you will need to re-search for this device. That’s basically the method by which the keyboard is secured to the desktop.

Get ready to search for the keyboard

Searching...

Found the keyboard - now let's secure it

Here's the keyboard connect button

Once all of this is done, you can check out some of the keyboard and mouse preferences. Here are some snapshots of that:

Here are the keyboard properties

followed by the mouse properties

2.2 Issues

The initial installation of the keyboard and mouse went smoothly on my dual XEON box. There were a couple of issues that cropped up along the way that I thought I would make a note of. Here goes:

1. System boot:

As I said before, since the Bluetooth stack does not get loaded until the USB driver for the transceiver is installed, you can not use the keyboard until Windows loads into the login prompt. Keep a spare keyboard and mouse handy.

2. Device detection:

Though the initial install went smoothly, I did have a couple of strange problems crop up during my testing.

The first problem came up when I moved the transceiver base to a different USB port. Though the transceiver came up just fine in Device Manager – the keyboard and mouse stopped working. Any attempt at searching for the devices using the keyboard and mouse software failed. I even removed the devices from Device Manager and tried to have the Microsoft software search for the hardware but to no avail. Then by some freak happening of nature, the Microsoft keyboard and mouse software found the peripherals and secured connections with them.

Trying to verify that this was not a problem with my XEON system, I decided to connect the Bluetooth transceiver to the laptop USB connector. Installation of the drivers went smoothly and then the devices were found. What I then tried to do was to tell the software application to re-detect the devices. At this point, it failed to find the mouse or the keyboard. Different system – different causes – but same net effect: Both the keyboard and mouse were effectively incapacitated because the Microsoft software drivers could not detect the Bluetooth peripherals. This was fixed by uninstalling the software and then reinstalling the driver software. Then I told the software to go ahead and detect Bluetooth devices and everything worked.

Thus my recommendation to you is – if you managed to get the keyboard and mouse detected by the OS, then leave it be. I can’t say that everyone will run into these problems with their systems. One test that would be good to try would be to see if other third party Bluetooth adapters will have problems with this keyboard and mouse.

3. Interference:

So the big question that a number of people have is whether there would be any interference between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. From my informal testing, there appeared to be no interference between the two protocols on the 2.4GHz band… HOWEVER.. I just happened to be on the phone with a customer support person from my ISP when I noticed that my mouse movement was severely lagging. No matter what I did, commands sent from the mouse would take seconds to actually show up visually. Then it occurred to me that the culprit was my Panasonic 2.4GHz Cordless phone. I then proceeded to turn off the phone and put it away and sure enough – everything worked again. This was perhaps the most disturbing form of interference. If Wi-Fi (802.11b) had been compromised, then I always had wired Ethernet to fall back on. However, I could not use my mouse or keyboard effectively while talking on the home phone by my computer. That is a major productivity killer for myself and something to think about if you use a 2.4GHz phone a great deal. I suppose I could always use a corded phone but I’m not enamored enough with a Bluetooth keyboard to make that happen. Will this occur in all 2.4GHz phones and Bluetooth systems? I truly don’t know unfortunately.

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