When I built my Home Theater PC last year, my girlfriend had one request: that I not take up space in our living room with a full-sized keyboard. Since I did not plan on doing extensive typing or gaming on the machine, having a small hand-held gadget to control our media center was a great idea. I picked up a Logitech DiNovo Mini to do the job.
Nice features of the DiNovo Mini
The Logitech DiNovo Mini is a palm-sized bluetooth keyboard designed specifically for PC-powered entertainment systems. It looks right at home next to your other remote controls, and has a variety of features that make it a great choice for use with an HTPC:
- A backlit keyboard lets you operate your entertainment system without turning on the lights.
- No wires strung across the room — the DiNovo mini comes with a Bluetooth dongle that plugs into a USB port at communicates wirelessly with the keyboard from up to 30 feet away.
- A dual-function clickpad works as a touch pad to point and click like you would on any other computer, but can also switch to being an up/down/left/right directional pad for navigating through media, menus, web pages and documents without having to hunt for scroll bars.
- The DiNovo mini has good battery life. The product specifications say a full charge takes 4 hours and lasts for 30 days. I have found that to be accurate. You can also do a quick 10 minute charge and have it last for one day.
Observations
- The keys need to be pressed firmly. If you tap over them lightly, you will miss a letter here and there.
- To keep the keyboard small, many keys have secondary functions that are operated by holding down the FN key. Not a big problem… sacrifices must be made to keep the size small. I do wish there was a dedicated Esc key though.
- There are no bumps on the F and J keys. Even if you can touch type on the DiNovo mini, you still usually have to glance down to first find your place on the home row.
- There is one CTRL key on the left, and one ALT key on the right. It would be nice to have one of each on both sides of the keyboard.
Operating System Compatibility
I had the DiNovo Mini working right out of the box with Windows Vista and Windows 7, without any additional configuration. In Ubuntu Linux, they keyboard worked right away but the trackpad and media controls (play/pause/skip etc…) did not. After hunting around various Linux forums for advice, I was able to get it working by installing a few drivers and making some configuration changes.
Thoughts on the DiNovo Mini
The Logitech DiNovo Mini was a great addition to my media center because of its small size. It doesn’t take up much room, is stored easily, doesn’t need any wires, and is easy to pass around between guests.
As for the full-sized keyboard? I dropped $8 on an old, clunky, wired PS/2 keyboard just to see the look on her face when she saw it sitting on the coffee table. It didn’t go to waste though– it comes in handy performing tasks when USB/Bluetooth drivers are not available, such as low level system maintenance or installing other operating systems.
If you’re looking for a palm-sized way to wirelessly control your PC through your TV, the Logitech diNovo Mini is available at Amazon.com
