What about battery life?

After completing the work for this review, the AWB mouse's battery indicator is completely full. Surprisingly, the AWB kb's battery indicator is down about 10 percent. Battery life can be maximized by turning off both the keyboard and mouse after the computer is shut down and turning them back on before turning on the computer. This worked for us.

What about interference? Our Big Al and one of the Cubes are on an AirPort Extreme Base station network. In several hours use, we noted no interference between the AirPort signal on Big Al and the two wireless accessories. However, during several hours use with the Cube we had one instance where the mouse pointer began to lag the mouse's movement significantly and the AirPort signal strength dropped from a solid four rings to one. It cleared up in less than a minute and so far has not recurred. [Paragraph added 10/6]

In summary, we really like both products. We dislike mouse cords immensely since they are always catching on something--we've pulled over more than one cup of liquid in our time. Apple's Wireless Bluetooth Mouse is a very good option since we also like Apple's optical mouse for everything except games. The extra weight of the batteries improves its feel in our opinion. The Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard works well with one exception. The keyboard should be a boon to those who do not want to be tethered to their Macs for some reason or don't want to have to plug a keyboard into a Powerbook that's been traveling. The only real glitch is the AWB keyboard's failure to work while in single user mode. This bug should be fixed in a future update.

The Apple Wireless Mouse and Keyboard are available for $69 each. The D-Link DBT 120 B3 Bluetooth module is available for $49.

As a footnote, we're disappointed that our supply of original D-Link Bluetooth USB modules (DWB 120M) have been obsoleted so soon in the Bluetooth development and deployment process. At least they still work with our Bluetooth cell phone and among themselves but we suspect their days are numbered.

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