Man in the chair

Man in the chair soundtrack

The one man in the chair soundtrack looking at today is Verbatims Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard, a foldable plank with its own carrying pouch and built-in iPod touch stand. Specs at a glance: Ultra Compact Design: The iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch are all about portability, and Verbatims Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard doesnt interfere with that concept. Its already smaller than a traditional keyboard, and when folded up, its nearly small enough to comfortably shove into your pants pocket. We also like the leather-esque carrying case, which we see being particularly useful for college kids as they toss the keyboard into their backpack. Batteries Included: It wouldnt have been the end of the world if Verbatim didnt toss in a pair of required AAA batteries, but the fact that it did earns the company kudos. Media Console: Youve heard that All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and when the humdrum of the work day kicks in, accessing your iTunes music is a single button press away. A media console on the left-hand side lets you play, pause, fast forward, rewind, skip tracks, and adjust the volume so you can fire up a love song as you compose a break-up letter. Built-in iPod/iPhone Stand: Nestled inside Verbatims keyboard is a stand for your iPod touch or iPhone. Its extremely light and doesnt add much weight to the plank, so even if you only intend to use the keyboard with your iPad, its still a highly portable plank. And though its not advertised as such, its a pretty generic stand that works with non-Apple devices, too. For example, we were able to plop our Motorola Droid X2 smartphone onto the stand without issue Android support is a crap-shoot however, as we werent able to get the keyboard to play nice with our HTC Incredible 2 smartphone. Key Action: Typing on the Verbatim Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard is where the rubber meets the road, and unfortunately this plank doesnt provide a smooth ride. We found the key action too soft for our tastes, and while the low profile keys help man in the chair soundtrack portability, they come at the cost of comfort. Its like typing on a notebook keyboard from yesteryear, back before chiclet-style keys were all the rage. Its still better than using a virtual keyboard, but far less than ideal. Key Layout: This ties in with our above complaint, in that the key layout makes for a less than satisfactory typing experience. As a result of the ultra-compact design, Verbatim had to smush the keys together. The right-shift key is about one-quarter the size of a regular shift key and a bit hard to reach, and the space bar, which has been broken in two halves, takes some getting used to. And if you spend most of your time hammering out numbers into spreadsheets, youll quickly curse the lack of a numpad. Our complaints with Verbatims Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard are small in number; unfortunately for Verbatim they strike at the core of what you use a keyboard for. The whole point of investing in a third-party keyboard for your iPad is to sidestep having to type on the tablets virtual plank, but in this case you end up trading one annoyance for another. The layout is less than ideal, and the key action feels all too familiar to those old notebook keyboards that, for the most part, have gone the way of the dodo.