Which wireless keyboard with integrated touchpad or trackball to use?

Hi :)

I am not quite sure exactly what you are asking here.

If you are going to use a computer at a desktop or something then i tend to prefer having the mouse and keyboard on wires. I usually prefer the tiny little green & purple ps/2 plugs (nothing to do with playstation) but at the moment i am using a usb-mouse which is rather nice actually :)

If the monitor is going to be huge and you are going to be quite some distance away from it then there's a good argument for having wireless mouse and keyboard but these are often quite heavy and heavy or bulky & eat through batteries at an alarming rate. At least it reduces the chances of trip-hazards tho. Although if you have ever lost a tele remote control then you might want to make sure you have a wired mouse also plugged in as a last resort. My machine has 2 mice operating the same mouse arrow with no trouble at all mostly ;)

i find touchpad and trackballs really difficult and if they are integrated in with the main machine the i worry about wear-and-tear making them unusable tooo soon. I have never heard of anyone having this problem in reality tho. Often laptops users seem to get a tiny or full sized mouse for use at home so that they only use the touchpad when they have taken the laptop/netbook out for the day. A games-controller like a joystick but with a trackball or something sounds like a luxury but would at least mean that if it wore out then replacing it would be relatively easy.

I'm really not sure i am on the right track here? Is this what you were asking? Please let us know.
Regards from
Tom :)

Thanks for the reply Tom.

The idea is to use this computer in the livingroom, the computer with flatscreen on one side of the room and sitting on the couch on the otherside. (no I am not a couch patato :)
My wife likes to browse there as I usually take all the time on our regular desktop machine and to make it a dedicated computer for use with a messenger/webcam for meeting our family on the otherside of the world.

I am looking at a wired keyboard with touchpad from Lenovo, the Lenovo USB Business Black Travel Keyboard with UltraNav, this a USB keyboard with buidin touchpad.

Any experience with the Logitech diNovo Mini Cordless or Logitech diNovo Edge Cordless, both are bluetooth?

Thanks again

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/switching/preparing-hardware.html

Wow, i really couldn't find anything useful! The most relevant stuff i could find said this would only work on Win2k or WinXp! This really doesn't seem very likely.

I would recommend asking the people you are thinking of buying the unit off specifically if it will support linux. Perhaps ask in writing. The best i could find were these pages
http://www.lenovo.com/uk/en/
http://www.lenovo.com/planetwide/select/selector.html?refurl=http%3A//www.google.co.uk/url%3Fsa%3Dt%26source%3Dweb%26ct%3Dres%26cd%3D2%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.lenovo.com%252F%26ei%3D-qCeSuCUJ4Xd-QaXvMTaCw%26rct%3Dj%26q%3DLenovo+homepage%26usg%3DAFQjCNERWLfxcaJlJOKPvK0QfuyW2jQK9w

Personally given the price and my dislike of trackpads (which seem to take resting wrists as actions to perform onscreen) i would suggest just getting a cheap £5 keyboard & £10 mouse and put the saving into a newer graphics card, preferably ati or nVidia.

Sorry i wasn't much help there!
Regards from
Tom :)

Hmmm, i found this page
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/gbweb/LenovoPortal/en_GB/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=31P9493&current-category-id=E6710B8C5A5F44239217E34D281CCDD9

Which states "Windows®. Life without Walls™Lenovo recommends Windows." So pleeeease write to them and tell them that you had been considering buying some of thier products but have been dissuaded by the extra costs of having to use Windows when you prefer Linux and that you wont be buying any of their products due to their lack of support for Linux.

Hopefully they might get enough such encouragements to force them intoa re-think someday.
Good luck and regards as always from
Tom :)

I have been chatting with a few experienced linux users about this but only 1 ventured to say anything and that was that "I've owned a couple Lenovo products ... always found the quality exceptional ... usually has very little problems running Linux, if any" so now i really don't know what to think, especially because of what they say on their own website in big lettering.

Today I was at consumer electronics store and bumped into this TRUST keyboard with trackball: Wireless Entertainment Keyboard (Vista Remote Keyboard KB-2950) (14909-02)

http://www.trust.com/products/product.aspx?artnr=14909&cxt=keyfs

Nearly everything works with Ubuntu 9.04, only the special MS mediacentre keys don't works and the two Windows buttons.
This works:
- scroll wheel
- Home button for Firefox.
- Favorites/bookmarks for Firefox
- email app. button for Evolution mail.
- Sound volume, mute
- Play/pause
- next/prev. track
- Bios can be entered during boot

Thanks for the help.

Ahhh great, that sounds good :))
The other keys can probably be set using

System - Preferences - Keyboard Shortcuts

unless you have already tried that.
Anyway, nicely done and congrats
Regards from
Tom :)