I was a bit worried about buying this wireless keyboard off the shelf, since I was taking a gamble on whether it would be supported on Linux, but when I got it home I was pleasantly surprised by how easily I got it set up. I just plugged in the receiver and held down the "connect" button on the back for a few seconds, and everything worked perfectly. No special setup or configuration was needed. It even works just fine through the USB a/b switch that I bought so that I can flip back and forth between my two desktop systems with it.

All the multimedia keys are reported by xev, so it looks like I just need to map keysyms to them using xmodmap, then set up some actions for them with xbindkeys. Ten of the keys are lined up across the top in a standard style, and the eleventh is a separate "sleep" key at the top left. Perhaps this has a special function on Windows, but on Linux it registers as just another key.

I don't plan on using the (standard 3-button) mouse because I have a trackball I prefer, but I tested it too with no problems.

I can only see a couple of minor disadvantages so far. I feel the receiving station is a bit big and its cord is much longer than necessary (more desktop clutter, but the one receiver does handle both keyboard and mouse). Also, there's an on/off switch on the mouse, but none on the keyboard, so I'm a bit worried about battery life. I'd have liked to be able to turn the thing off completely when I'm not going to use it for a while. Other than that, it seems solidly-built and nicely designed, and was quite reasonably-priced compared to some of the competition.

Overall, I highly recommend this product. I'm sure most western users won't be directly interested in a Japanese keyboard, but if the rest of Buffalo's I/O products are similar, it might be a brand to look into.


(Edit Dec. 28, 2009): Well, I've been using the keyboard for a year now, and I've had no problems with it. I'm happy to report that the original batteries are still going strong after a whole year of regular use, so my worries there were unfounded.

When I reinstalled the OS on one of my systems this year, all the keys were instantly detected and already mapped to reasonable keysyms. But kde4 refuses to let me use the sleep button for regular actions (like switching desktops), so I had to map that one to a different sym anyway.

I had a bit of trouble when I wanted to move those keys around though. I wanted to swap the right and left side buttons, so that the sound controls are on the left side. It turns out that, unlike the regular keys which pop out easily, the top bar ones are locked in by a kind of hinged top and a tab on the bottom edge that slots into a hole in the chassis. It took a bit of effort to work them out of their holes without breaking anything. Then I discovered that the tabs are not uniformly positioned, so I had to use a file to widen some of the slots so that the new keys could fit them. But in the end I got everything back in place with only minor marring.

The only other problem I can report is that the connect button on the underside turned out to be rather easy to accidentally hit, causing the connection to be lost. But a bit of dark tape over it has cut down on that problem.