Arianet RF Keyboard and Mouse

[Allen]

As I said the other day, I bought one of these. Here's my little review.

Wednesday at about 4pm, I ordered the Arianet Style RF Keyboard & Mouse from Aria (obviously). On Thursday at about 11am, it arrived. Now that’s what I call service! I unpacked it and looked at what I had. The mouse looks very similar to a Logitech wireless optical mouse and is silver and black and the keyboard is a laptop style (I love this style of keyboard) which is again silver, with a small black bar across the top where the extra function buttons go, like media controls and IE/Outlook controls.

I plugged in the batteries, connected the mouse cradle to the power supply and plugged in the USB to my computer at work. The computer runs Windows XP and was on when I plugged it in (the manual says to plug it into the machine when it’s off). Windows XP recognised it straight away! I pressed the connect button on the mouse cradle, hit a key on the keyboard and it was away. No problems, no drivers needed, no errors just simple ‘plug and play’.

For those of you who’ve never used a laptop before, the keyboard will take a bit of getting used to, but for me, I love it. The keys are quite well spaced, and since it’s a desktop keyboard it has the number pad but the rest of the layout is exactly like a laptop. The mouse is quite light compared to others I’ve used but I found this rather refreshing. After changing the mouse speed I was working at my normal pace without any hitches.

I must say that for £16.99+VAT and del (£28.13 inclusive) on Aria's Super Specials, it is well worth every penny. It looks stylish, it works well and it’s cheap. What more can you ask for?

Got home Thursday night and had the same ease of installation on my Windows 2000 Pro machine so I was chuffed with that. Straight away I loaded CoD to give it a good thrashing and boy was I initially disappointed. The lag was unbearable, but only when using the mouse and keyboard at the same time. I thought this kit was gonna be no good for FPS games as it was so bad I couldn’t even play it.

Anyway, to cut the long story short, I installed the drivers, rebooted my PC, loaded up CoD again and it ran perfectly. Even from 2 meters away whilst lying on my bed!

It’s now sitting pretty on my desk and is working perfectly, in normal windows applications and in fast action paced 3D games. The range of the mouse is only about 2 meters, but the keyboard worked in the front room (about 8 meters away!)

Now I just need that 17” Arianet TFT to go with it…

[wilsonian]

hehe, glad you liked it, i have seen then at LAN's but personally i'd go for a microsoft set up.

Let us know how the TFT works out if you have the budget for one!

[r1zeek]

Nice little review there Al.

Lying on your bed is the best place to play any game, I do it all the time

Sounds like a quality kit, i might have to look into it.....

[Allen]

Cheers.

I might do more when I start getting new kit, see if I can come up with some interesting writing for you all to read.

[Shogun]

Any pictures?

[r1zeek]

Cheers.

I might do more when I start getting new kit, see if I can come up with some interesting writing for you all to read.

You should mate, it atleast gives me something to read

[Allen]

Any pictures?

Maybe, if I can get my g/f to bring round her digital camera... she always thinks I'm gonna take dodgy pitures with it... wonder why!