Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard

The Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard is a brushed aluminium foldaway keyboard that works with a number of different PDAs, as well as Media Centers, tablet PCs and notebooks.

Once opened out it is 25cm long, about the width of your little finger and has full-size keys on which to type. Although this is a Qwerty keyboard, in order to accommodate its small size Think Outside has compromised on the layout of other keys - this can initially be confusing, especially if you touch type.

Despite setting it up as a UK keyboard, we found several symbols accessed via the green function or Shift buttons were wrong. This was very annoying as it meant we had to go hunting for common keys, such as the pound sign and the @ key. Think Outside boasts that this product allows you to easily write emails, memos and surf the web, so this is really unforgivable.

Another annoyance is that the arrow keys have to be continually hit to move around your document. Holding them down will result in the cursor moving only once. It does come with a decent set of shortcut function keys for commonly used PDA programs though, such as calendar and contacts, and you can customise a further 10.

This review was written on a train using an XDA II PDA with the keyboard on a table. It was pretty stable, although prone to wobble when using keys at either end. However, even when the train was rocking it was easy to hit the correct keys.

Set up is straightforward if you ignore some of the onscreen instructions and stick with the paper manual. The manufacturer needs to sort this out as the on-screen instructions are confusing if you are new to the keyboard, making it difficult to pair with your PDA.

Once paired, it works fine. You can detach the PDA holder and move it further away from you should you wish. When turning the PDA on, there is a delay of a couple of seconds before the keyboard will type. You can also buy a Bluetooth PDA mouse to accompany the keyboard.

The keyboard is sleek, light and looks good, and we want to like it, but for the money you pay the annoyances mentioned above must be addressed.

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