BlackBerry-like keyboard and touchpad, for home theater PCs

Finally, someone is figuring out that if you want a PC in your home theater, you'll be needing a decent, hardware keyboard. Here's one of the best ideas yet, and it looks a whole lot like a Blackberry: It's a wireless USB keyboard and touchpad that might be just what you need.

We like its backlit keyboard and radio-frequency (RF) operation, using the 2.4GHz band, so you don't have to worry about pointing the device directly at the receiver. While this little handset looks kind of cheap, it's more portable than a standard-sized keyboard, and its touchpad takes the place of a bulky mouse. If you look at the white one in the gallery below, it actually doesn't look half bad.

This is a heck of a sight better than those horrendous on-screen keyboards that you navigate with a remote control. Think about it — how many button presses does it take to spell your name? About 50? It's absurd. Drop $61 on this tiny keyboard, and solve that problem once and for all. Here's a video of the device in action:

Via Brando