HP Wireless Elite Desktop Keyboard and Mouse

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porkchop
Posts: 496
Joined: Thu May 25, 2006 1:19 am
Location: Australia

HP Wireless Elite Desktop Keyboard and Mouse

Post by porkchop » Thu Dec 31, 2009 6:03 pm

HP Wireless Elite Desktop Keyboard and Mouse

went to my mates place last night and saw his girlfriends new hp all in one, which had an almost perfect (i would prefer no number pad for a smaller footprint) wireless kb.
things i noticed, experienced, measured or read on the hp site:
-large, quiet, laptop style keys
-spill resistant
-takes 2aaa batteries
-battery bulge is about 10mm, the rest of the body is about 5mm
-438mm long, 154mm deep (my apple alu is 430 long)
-2 levels of slope (one which is very gentle and perfect for me)
-flexes a little
-mouse is nothing special (but surprisingly flat for a mouse with 2aa batteries)

experiences? thoughts? comments?

edit: images added.
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JazzJackRabbit
Posts: 1386
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:53 pm

Post by JazzJackRabbit » Mon Jan 04, 2010 12:31 pm

HP sells two versions of this keyboard, one with bundled mouse and one without. I initially didn't know about mouseless version so I bought bundled one for $40, had to throw the mouse in the garbage bin right away. A couple of months later Fry's has sale on keyboard alone at $15, d-oh! Oh well, bought that one too just in case.

Thoughts. I'm using one in my HTPC. Very small, very slim, actually looks good on the coffee table as opposed to bulky curved Microsoft keyboard before. The black color and slim profile helps it sit on the table unnoticed whereas Microsoft Curved one was a sore for the eyes. Construction is decent, there is some flex, but not a whole lot. Good keys, should be scissors, same as UltraX, but I still prefer UltraX feel, it just somehow feels better. Maybe it's the key size, I have medium sized fingers, so large keys on the HP keyboard might actually hinder me. Still, very good keys. Range is good, I also didn't notice any lag. There are very few downsides as far as I'm concerned. The sidepanels on the keyboard are silver bling. Do not like that. HP also just HAD to screw up pgup/pgdwn block. Another negative. And there is also stupid sleep button on the keyboard, I'm against those buttons because I'm always afraid to accidentally hit them, however, with this keyboard the button is recessed, so the chances of hitting it are low. Oh, almost forgot, some idiot manager at HP decided it would be nice idea to plant a super bright blue led light on the receiver and have it flash every time you press a key on your keyboard. Every. Single. Time. Thankfully a piece of electrical tape fixed the problem in 40 seconds, but I'm still amused that someone would actually think this was a good idea. Overall great HTPC keyboard, even though I still prefer UltraX for main PC.

Rucker
Posts: 65
Joined: Mon Aug 03, 2009 12:44 pm
Location: Colorado USA

Post by Rucker » Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:56 pm

Gosh, I'm sorry you don't like the keyboard. I'm using one at work and it's working out just fine, although I do prefer low profile keys to scissor keys. I'm not using the mouse, as my angled keyboard tray just lets it slide to the floor.

HP is currently bundling a slightly different version with the PCs without the silver bling, so perhaps you can trade with someone who buys a new PC. I agree that the keyboard layout isn't necessarily optimal, and the lack of a caps lock/num lock LED bugs me, but compromises have to be made for a slim keyboard, and for costs, also.

BTW, I'm HP's commodity manager for aftermarket keyboards, so this is my product. It was leveraged from the HP folks who sourced it originally to include in higher end PCs, so any design issues lay with them. I suspect that the bright blue LED was the cheapest one available at the time, as we don't pay for bling often, and since it's plugged in to a desktop, power consumption really isn't an issue.

Most users I talk to love the thing, but I only use it because it was handy. If you like a scissor key feel, though, it's quite nice. And if you have any issues with it, why, you've got a contact right here. ;)

JazzJackRabbit
Posts: 1386
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:53 pm

Post by JazzJackRabbit » Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:33 am

Actually my review was mainly a positive one (I wouldn't get the second keyboard just in case if I didn't like the first one, would I?). I guess it came off a little bit too negative because I empathized the negative points. This is still one of the better wireless keyboards I've tried, and it goes very well with my HTPC setup. It's just that I still give edge to UltraX overall and since I don't care for wireless in my main PC, that's what I use there.

I've never seen numlock/capslock leds on wireless keyboards though. There may be some, but I haven't seen them. I suppose it's a power drain issues, so I'm fine with not having those leds on keyboard. I almost never use capslock anyway, and my numlock is always on. Nonstandard pgup/pgdwn block is bad, but I suppose I'm a dying minority being software developer and growing up in DOS times. I still can't understand why HP would put blue led on the receiver, it's just plain annoying. That's the first thing my dad noticed when he got the same keyboard for use with his laptop because he wanted full size keyboard when he's at home - the blue led flashing every time he typed. He taped it over of course. This is less of an issue with standard PCs, but it was still annoying with my HTPC when I was typing in the dark room and the wall behind HTPC was flashing blue (I taped over the led the same day which fixed the problem).

Anyway, this is still a good keyboard, just not perfect. :)

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