Friday, August 27, 2010

Low Price Kensington 19-Key External Pocket Keypad and Calculator (33059)


This keypad is reasonably compact and coordinates well with silver laptops. The keys have good tactile feel and feedback. There is a raised dot on the 5 key to ensure the "home" position for data entry. The keypad works as a simple calculator when disconnected from a computer. This is a critical accessory for spreadsheet users, including teachers using a spreadsheet for gradebook entries.

Contrary to the experience of another reviewer, I have found this model to work just fine with all my Macintosh computers and laptops running OSX 10.2 through 10.4 and Excel 98 and 2004. (I will not use Excel 2008 until it is restored to more than 50% of the function of 2004). It requires no driver installation on a Macintosh.

I would have given this accessory a 5-star rating save for one annoying problem. When using this with a Mac laptop, if you leave the keypad attached to the computer and put the laptop to sleep by closing the cover, the keypad annoyingly fills the current Excel cell with a long string of a single digit repeating rapidly. The fix for this is to unplug the USB cable and plug it back in, then delete the many (hundreds sometimes) false digits. The keypad then works fine thereafter...unless you put the computer to sleep again.

So a good product in my opinion, just not perfect. rossGet more detail about Kensington 19-Key External Pocket Keypad and Calculator (33059).

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