'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
Logitech Cordless Desktop Optical
- Well designed and well-featured receiver connects to host PC via PS/2 or USB.
- Expensive.
An all-in-one wireless keyboard/mouse, the Cordless Desktop Optical from Logitech, marries the existing Cordless MouseMan Optical with a new wireless keyboard.
Stable and solid, the keyboard is pleasant to use. Besides the 105 traditional keys, it provides a scroll wheel and 19 shortcut keys for surfing the Internet, picking up email or listening to music. Most are useful, but others seem superfluous -- do you really need more than one 'shopping' button (which, by default, points to the Logitech sales site), for example? We would have preferred an 'eject CD' button, or a button for returning to an previously visited Web page. Happily, most of the shortcut buttons are user-configurable.
You can choose between two radio frequencies in order to avoid jamming -- possible up to two metres -- between multiple users. As for the radio receiver, you can connect it via the USB port or the two PS/2 ports, which are reserved traditionally for keyboards and mice. The keyboard and mouse are powered by the six AA batteries, which deliver a battery life of at least three months.
If you like the idea of a wireless desktop and don't mind the cost, Logitech's solution has a lot of appeal. Better value for money can be had from Microsoft's Wireless Desktop, however.