One of my cousins works in Hong Kong and I knew he was coming back here for Chinese New Year so I just had to ask him to get something from my favorite website that I hate to visit... Brando. If you ever wanted to buy any chapalang branded USB doodad from a website that doesn't look like a fly by night outfit... well Brando is the place to go.... and I have went... way too many times. Anyway the object in question this time is this.

It's a wireless keyboard... with a trackball! Which means it's another ideal candidate for being used as a HTPC controller. I got this to replace the Genius which was in use on the HTPC at home. The darn trackpoint on the Genius was growing ever insensitive, not to mention felt like it was ready to snap off.

This replacement is smaller, note how it's only a bit wider than the 9" eeePC that it's sitting on. Means the wife won't complain about the big thing she has to lug around when she wants to watch something. Also high on the WAF is of course.. the trackball.

The Genius's trackpoint was slow, and tedius to use. My wife HATED it so much she would rather use a mouse on the sofa than use the trackpoint. The trackball on this new keyboard is well, much more controllable. Roll it fast it moves fast, slow.. moves slow. Much more acceptable. The interesting thing is that in order to save power the optical sensor of the trackball TURNS OFF after a period of inactivity, after which you have to hit the power button to turn the mouse back on again. I guess it saves power because it doesn't need to run any sort of standby circuit to see if the trackball is moved to turn on the sensor.

Another interesting thing about the keyboard is that the buttons are on the CORNER of the keyboard and not on the keyboard itself.

Interesting placement decision I must say.