Bluetooth Keyboard With Trackball and Mouse Buttons

Motion Computing Keyboard ... This thing rocks.

[physics]

My prayers were finally answered. Someone made a good bluetooth keyboard with a trackball and mouse buttons. The "Motion Computing Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard"
[motioncomputing.com...]
Got this beauty yesterday and it said "Here i am, rock you like a hurricane". Well, it didn't really say that but it might as well have.
It works great with my iBook G4 running Mac OS X Tiger, actually the keyboard is about the same size. Also the way the trackball is positioned in the upper right and the buttons in the upper left it's great for using while leaning back in my "manager's" chair.
My only wish: buttons that I could push that would switch the keyboard to interface with different computers. I.e. a 'C1' button that would connect it to my desktop, a 'C2' button that would connect it to my laptop, etc. So that I can work on multiple computers simultaneously without having to shuffle multiple keybords. I don't know if they'll ever do that though since I can't imagine the demand is too high. But a programmer can dream ;)

[physics]

Oh, I forgot to mention that it's slim and solid and the keys 'feel good'. I.e. they are not too hard to push but also not so easy that you don't know you've pushed it (I hear a tiny click when I push them).
2 more feature requests: backlighting and a mac driver so I can use the 'WWW', etc buttons on the top (note that some of the top buttons work on the mac: volume up, down, off and sleep).

[jtara]

My only wish: buttons that I could push that would switch the keyboard to interface with different computers. I.e. a 'C1' button that would connect it to my desktop, a 'C2' button that would connect it to my laptop, etc.

Your wish is granted.

There's a great free (as in beer) little keyboard and mouse sharing software package called Synergy (it's a SourceForge project) that let's you use one mouse and keyboard to seemlessly access multiple systems. It's available for both Windows and Linux (and other Unix versions). There's also a partially-completed Mac-OS versions.

The assumption is each system has it's own dedicated display(s). You set up a little config file with your screen layout. When you move the mouse past the edge of a screen, instead of stopping, the cursor just continues on the next screen. ON A DIFFERENT COMPUTER. The keyboard focus also shifts to that computer. It uses TCP/IP networking to communicate between the machines, and it essentially acts as a mouse/keyboard driver on the other systems. (i.e. that your mouse/keyboard aren't connected to.

It will also cut-and-paste between computers.

Shut down a computer or disconnect it from the network and no harm done. Now the cursor just stops at the edge of the screen, until that computer comes back. (I think it will even just hop over a "missing" computer if you have more than 2.)

I've used this with my notebook, and it is a great little utility.

[physics]

jtara, you are my hero. I hope the mac versions are done enough to work on my system :)