Quick Review: Logitech MK235 Wireless Keyboard/Mouse Combo

Earlier this year I bought a Logitech MK235 mouse/keyboard combo to replace my ageing Rapoo RP-X1800 that lasted longer than I thought it would but in the end succumbed to a thorough trashing from children using it on the HTPC.

Quick thoughts on the MK235:

Pros

• Battery life so far seems okay. Nearly six months in with daily use, no need to change anything yet.
• Keyboard layout is pretty close to being standard. In order to be compact a lot of wireless keyboards have a non-standard layout which is immensely frustrating.
• Wireless receiver is nice and small — can use it plugged into the front USB port without it sticking out precariously.

Cons

• No LEDs to indicate status (eg caps lock). A common issue with lower end wireless keyboards.
• Mouse has no forward/back buttons.
• The biggy: the wireless connectivity is terrible if you're using it as I am in a HTPC situation. It will often lose connection, but will store up those "lost" strokes, and then apply them all at once when it reconnects...if it reconnects soon enough. It makes for a frustrating experience where you're not quite sure if the keypress will be accepted or not at any given time. Compared to the Logitech K400 — which had a crazy-good wireless implementation — this is a bit of a let down. If it's sitting on a desk with good line of site to the receiver it may not be an issue.

The Nightmare that is Windows 8

I recently installed Windows 8 for the first time. Have to say it was an absolute nightmare. It took a long time, had some real eye-opening WTFs, and had a dastardly hardware incompatibility.

The system was an Intel G1620 with an Asus P8B75-M. It had been happily running various flavours of Linux, but I was passing it over to my wife to use, and the demand for Windows had come with it.

Installation Summary

The high(?) lights:

• Only boots with the UEFI option. This is more informational than anything, but the motherboard needed to be set to this option. Newer motherboards may have this as the default now.
• During the installation, it appears to require a Microsoft account just to use the OS. This was a real WTF moment for me (call it the "Facebook effect" perhaps, the insidious attempt by companies to force encourage everyone to create an account with them to do anything, when there is no value added for the user to do so). Fortunately, there is a workaround as Scott Hanselman details here. Basically, you click "Create a New Account", and the option to avoid creating an account appears in that step. Intuitive!
• Something broke during the first install. This was the real "nightmare" part.

Windows 8 is People Broken

The event during install was a hard lock up (almost at the end, of course :/). The hard lock required full power cycle, and afterwards the machine refused to boot (not surprising, since installation didn't complete properly). But it also wouldn't repair afterwards, despite taking as long in the repair as the initial install took. In both cases it brought up the new-look blue screen of death (the "unhappy face" screen) with the error "CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT".

I reinstalled Linux to make sure it wasn't a hardware fault -- everything seem okay. I updated the motherboard BIOS (which reset the SATA devices from AHCI back to IDE, which prevented the UEFI boot until I switched them back).

In frustration, I reinstalled again. This time I unchecked "downloads updates from the internet during installation". This time, Windows 8 installed. So I immediately began to suspect the wireless card, a TP-Link TL-WN851ND, which up until this point had worked flawlessly.

As soon as I activated the wireless, bam! Windows hard-locked again, and refused to boot. Interestingly, Microsoft claim this card is compatible with Windows 8. I beg to differ.

I replaced with a D-Link DWA-548, which worked flawlessly (so, +1 for D-Link).

So I don't know if the problem was purely a Windows 8 driver issue, or if it was the combination of all the bits of hardware I was using. But I would avoid that particular TP-Link wireless card (or cards based on the same chipset) if using Windows 8.

The Interface

The above doesn't even touch on the interface, which is just plain...ugly. It is also the most infuriating interface I've used, and I've used quite a few. It's not just because it's different (the freedom to change desktop environments is one of the interesting things with Linux), but it simply...makes things difficult.

Full screen apps, hot area hovers to do even the simplest of actions...bah. Sure there are extensions to "make things right", but -- really, that's the solution? Some people say Windows 8 is a disaster. I don't know if that's true, but I do know Windows 8 is awful to use, and I'm glad that I don't have to use it myself.

Review: TP-Link TL-WN722N USB Wifi Adapter

Yesterday a friend from work lent me his TP-Link TL-WN722N USB wireless adapter to try out.

I plugged it into a machine running Linux Mint 15 (Cinnamon) 64-bit. At first everything seemed fine: it connected to the router flawlessly, and started getting data as fast as the internet could provide it.

Then I moved the machine into another room, to see how it would go through walls. It was about 8 metres away, going through two brick walls. It could no longer connect.

You mad bro? (Definitely didn't like being moved away from the router)

I gradually moved the machine closer, but found that I had to be in direct sight of the router and less than 1 metre away before it would connect up. I can't imagine this is normal, and must be a fault with the hardware. Bit unfortunate! If you've got one of these and get similar symptoms, I'd be returning it straight away.

Unfortunately I can't really do a proper review (even for me, I'm pretty rough after all) with these results. :(

Review: Rapoo RP-X1800 Wireless Keyboard/Mouse

Since my Shintaro wireless keyboard decided to go on the fritz, I needed a cheap replacement while the Shintaro goes off on its warranty journey.

The Rapoo RP-X1800 was $19, and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with it. They keys are a little squishy (as to be expected with a cheap keyboard), there is no caps lock LED (also common for wireless keyboards) and no off switch on the keyboard (there is one on the mouse).

But the wireless connectivity was flawless. Compared to the Shintaro, which was never quite right, the Rapoo just worked straight away with no key presses lost, and moving the mouse will wake the computer from screen saver, something the Shintaro trackball never did, to my annoyance. The wireless USB adapter isn't as small as a Logitech one, but is smaller than Shintaro's.

The biggest drawback for use as a HTPC input device is the separate mouse and keyboard parts, but I'd have no hesitation recommending the Rapoo X1800 as a solid budget wireless KB/mouse combo.

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Update 14-Dec-2013:

After running with this combo for a while now, I have noticed occasional glitches when typing, usually trying to type something really fast. Isn't much of an issue (doing passwords is probably the most annoying), but I didn't notice this issue when I first started using the Rapoo so thought I'd update to mention it.

For me Logitech is still the best as far as quality of wireless connectivity goes.

Review: Logitech K400 vs Shintaro Wireless Multimedia Keyboard

I was tossing up between a Logitech K400 and a Shintaro Multimedia (trackball) keyboard for my HTPC. I got the Logitech first for $35, but wasn't entirely happy with it so I got the Shintaro as well ($38+postage) for a comparison. These are their stories...

Shintaro Wireless Media (above) and Logitech K400

My initial reaction was that the Shintaro has a much more solid build than the Logitech. The mouse buttons were clicky and "alive", compared to the gummy feel of the K400 buttons, where you're never quite sure if you've actually pressed it.

The key layout was also much better, and almost for that alone I'd take the Shintaro. The placement of the right shift key and up arrow buttons on the Logitech continually annoyed me. The Shintaro is closer to a "normal" keyboard layout.

Shintaro positives:

• Solid feel and nice clicky buttons, has a quality about it.
• The keyboard layout is close to a regular desktop keyboard. Minimal pressing the wrong key when reaching into the shift/enter/arrow key area.
• I think I prefer the trackball to a touchpad.

Shintaro Wireless Media keyboard

Shintaro negatives:

• Size of the USB receiver. That thing is enormous. I ended up connecting it via a USB extension cable from the back of the case, because it looked so precarious hanging out the front.
• Wireless connectivity can perform really badly. Even with a direct line of sight and less than a metre distance, having the keyboard sitting in the wrong place on your knees can mean up to 80\% dropped characters. When it was connected it was fine, but I still haven't quite worked out what positions will cause it to go bad. (Even a direct line of sight < 3m sometimes drops the occasional character when typing).
• The board "goes to sleep" really quickly. Spinning the trackball doesn't wake it up either, you've got to press a key. I'm so used to bumping the mouse to wake up a computer, it takes a bit to get used to.
• While the build quality is nice, it is quite bulky.
• I sometimes had trouble getting into the BIOS with this keyboard.
• It has a "sync" step you have to perform by pressing a button on the receiver. I seemed to lose sync occasionally, but this may have just been the wakeup problem noted above.
• Takes four AA batteries, and with an estimated 3 month life, probably falls short of the Logitech in that respect.

Logitech positives:

• Rock solid wireless connection. I was typing thing in another room with no line of sight.
• Tiny USB receiver and no need to sync. Just works.
• Size-wise, the keyboard is nice and compact.

Logitech K400 wireless keyboard

Logitech negatives:

• The flimsy build quality and gummy feel of the keys and buttons. It just felt really cheap, and was difficult to know when you'd clicked a button.
• Keyboard layout was problematic. In particular, the Right Shift key is much smaller than normal, with the Up Arrow taking up the space. This means the Up Arrow is easily pressed when searching for the Shift key. Doing any command-line stuff during installation, this was infuriating.

The lengths of the lists don't represent who won in my test, since the negatives to the Logitech K400 and positives to the Shintaro were really big factors in my decision to keep the Shintaro.