Lenovo Wireless Multimedia Remote/Keyboard $35 w/ free shipping

[I.M.O.G.]

Deals here, with coupon code:
http://forums.redflagdeals.com/rfd-...media-remote-keyboard-34-99-free-ship-953963/

Our review of the remote is here:
http://www.overclockers.com/lenovo-wireless-multimedia-remote-keyboard-review-2/

 

[Xymurgy]

I bought this to use with my HTPC last time it went on sale. It's a decent piece of hardware, but I have a couple gripes (one is independent of the piece)

• No back-light means it's difficult to operate in the dark. It's difficult to find buttons by touch, so this becomes compounded.
• Doesn't play well with Ubuntu out of the box (fn key doesn't work, web browsing is awkward without a back button).

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I have it also, and I also wish it had a backlight - at the price however, I don't think you can get a backlight, or at least I haven't seen anything similar with a small but full keyboard like this and a backlight.

Mine worked fine mostly with the latest versions of Arch Linux and Mint (past 4 months)... There were problems with it losing connectivity, but I ruled out possibilities and it turned out to be something with the PC and not the remote. There are no F# keys, which is annoying. The Fn key worked fine for me to input alternate text labeled on the keys - but its not intended as an actual F# key I don't believe.

Just a tip, you can do alt+arrow keys to go back and forth in most browsers.

Anyways, that isn't to say your linux issues weren't legitimate, just that I didn't see the problem you did so it certainly isn't always present.

 

[Xymurgy]

I see the red optical light bleed out from around the trackball often, so I wish the engineers routed that behind the keys somehow. Even just lighted pinholes at the intersection of the keys would be helpful.

Wouldn't my fn key issue be with my distro, and not Linux in general?

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Thats a good idea about the optical light, heh.

More likely your distro than a kernel problem. Also more likely its something specific to your system, and not a problem with the distro. I have heard other Ubuntu users report it works good for them, and it worked for me in Mint, which is pretty similar to Ubuntu.

Could be a distro problem, but more likely it was a problem with something about your system, and maybe others wouldn't see the same results. Or maybe they will. Just wanted to say basically YMMV, I wouldn't expect to have any problems using this with Ubuntu - a lot of people are without issues.