New box, new keyboard and mouse.

I got a new keyboard and mouse for my shiny new Ubuntu system. The keyboard is a Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave, and the mouse is a wired Logitech G9 Laser.

The Keys to the Kingdom

Out of the box, the basic keyboard and multimedia keys work fine, as does the calculator and sleep button. The extended function keys and Windows-specific keys don’t do anything, save the mail key which opens up Evolution. (Fn+F1 also shows power information, but that’s not very useful.)

I tried to use Keytouch to edit the keys, but for reasons I don’t fully understand, it didn’t help.  There is some stuff on the forums there about USB keyboards not being able to be fully processed, so I think that might explain it. Although not a big deal, it sure would be nice to fully use my keyboard. I have to think that USB keyboards with lots of special keys are not exactly rare things now-a-days.

Mighty Mouse

The mouse though, seems to work fine (although I haven’t tried to program the keys or anything like that).

Not that you asked, but…

All that being said, if you care about the hardware from a hardware standpoint, I really like the way both the keyboard and the mouse feel. The “wave” in the keyboard is subtle, but nice; and the palm rest is the best I have seen on a keyboard. The mouse is great, too – it has 2 “shells” so you can have a wider or narrower mouse, and it comes with weights so you can adjust how heavy the mouse it as well.

I was using the Microsoft Desktop Elite for Bluetooth on my laptop, but I couldn’t rightly use that for Ubuntu now, could I? In comparison the Logitech is quite a bit nicer as well, although to be honest there is nothing really wrong with the Microsoft product from a “feeling” standpoint.

Next post: Ubuntu at work!