My impression of the Targus IR Universal Keyboard....

[Cortex]

I just received my targus keyboard and wanted to share my impressions of it.

Cons
1. its heavy and bulky
2. the space bar is awkard (there is a casing that prevents my thumb from easily pressing the space key down)
3. the brackets that hold the pocket pc are a little flimsy

Pros
1. the keys have great tactile feedback and it is a near full size keyboard
2. it should work with any recent pocket pc (im using a t-mobile ppc phone)
3. its pretty cheap (i got mine for about 60 new online)

[Sven Johannsen]

Cons
1. its heavy and bulky

Agreed, but on the plus side it does make my Axim look positively petite ;)

Pros
It also has a fairly unique feature. There is a joypad on the keyboard and the driver will show a curser on the PPC. That lets you navigate without having to pull the stylus, though it takes a bit of getting used to.

[JustinGTP]

by heavy and bulky, what do you mean? Heavy as in how heavy and dimensions?

-Justin.

[Sven Johannsen]

4.2"x5.6"x1" (closed), 12oz (that's 3/4 lb if you want it to sound worse)

[Cortex]

by heavy and bulky, what do you mean? Heavy as in how heavy and dimensions?

-Justin.

its not gigantic but it is larger than i was expecting. most of the problem stems from the design of the IR portion of the keyboard.

the way the keyboard folds up, its kind of a trifold design where the keyboard itself folds in half and then another piece equal in size and thickness of half the keyboard is then folded onto the previously folded keyboard.

it turns out that just looking at they folded keyboard (with the third IR segment unfolded), they keyboard is remarkably thin and reasonably light especially considering its got very nice, tactile keys. but the IR portion has a great deal of extra plastic as well as the plastic encasing that becomes the cover of the folded unit that makes this section very heavy.

i can understand why some IR keyboards opted to use a small mirror attached to the device to reflect the IR signal rather than sticking an entire IR assembly on top of the folded keyboard.