I've constantly said I had laptop keyboards and wanted keyboards with proper key presses, and I still do, but the crumb-catcher was getting on my nerves, its membrane backing was becoming ever more noticeable and the key press worse and worse. I was also getting fed up with having to constantly clean out the crud from underneath...

After having spent an hour cleaning off the crumb catcher at work on Friday, I stopped off at Saturn on the way home and, er, I have 3 of the things here now! (One for work, one for iMac and one for Vista PC here - I always try and get the same keyboard for each machine I regularly use).

I tried it and ummed and ahhed for about an hour, tried other keyboards in Saturn and ended up with the Apple aluminium keyboards. For the style of keyboard, they aren't bad, I still prefer a full keyboard, but the G series are just too big for my current desk at home (the two aluminums fit next to each other, but I have to move the iMac one out of the way in order to use the Windows PC mouse... Likewise, the G15 at work, whilst nice, was getting in the way.

The key action is a little flat, but better than almost any other keyboard I've tried lately - hardly a shining recommendation, more a statement about how poor keyboards in general are.

The only one that was halfway decent was the Steel, which cost the same as 3 Apple keyboards! Its action was good, not as good as an IBM or DEC keyboard, but pretty good, just not three times as good as the Apple one.

I don't know how long I'll be using them, but they aren't too bad. What I was really after was two cordless ones, but I could only find one without a numeric keypad, with Bluetooth... Why do Apple only make the cut down version, when they are charging a premium price for it? If I'm going to have to pay twice as much, I don't want half the keyboard missing!

The ways of Apple are often beyond the reasoning of us mere mortals Dave. You might as well ask why their Bluetooth keyboards don't work in conjunction with the iPhone.

If you saw the size of my desk, half a keyboard would be very sensible.

If oyu saw how much time I spend typing in numbers, a full keyboard would be very sensible.

They do both the full keyboard and the cut down one with a cable - I notice that the iMacs are now delivered with the castrated, cabled keyboard as well - so why can't they offer both with bluetooth?

Another annoying thing, I bought 2 docking stations for my iPhone, but they don't come with a USB cable! So, another €19 for an iPod USB cable for the second docking station!

Dave, if you want an easy way to map the mac kb to the vista machine try this.
Works a charm.

I also want a full size bluetooth keyboard

Thanks Saspro, I'll give it a look see, but it seems to be English layout only. I have a German keyboard, so the special characters are totally differently laid out...

One thing I have noticed with 2 of the 3 keyboards that I bought, they were bent around the numeric keypad. It wasn't much, just a millimeter or so in the air, but never the less, they were slightly bent. I easily managed to bend it straight, so that the keyboard sits flat on the desk.

I'm guessing that they might have been incorrectly transported, but I have never seen a keyboard before that was susceptible to being bent so easily.

I have just bought another aluminium Apple keyboard with numeric keypad, but the default seems to be without a keypad. The crumb catcher while great was looking decidedly like a health risk, and so has been relegated to the reserve squad.