I've been looking for a portable keyboard for the 770 for those times when the built-in methods don't quite cut it. In the past, I've used the Stowaway keyboard and liked it - but it's nearly as big and heavy as the 770 itself. So, I've been looking at these two keyboards:

• The Freedom Mini
• The Freedom Mini Duo

(I haven't been looking at the Freedom Universal, since it looks to be about as big and heavy as the Stowaway - if I'm wrong about that, please let me know.)
Has anyone had any experience with either of these two keyboards? Online reviews have been reasonably positive for both, but I'd value additional comments/input.

The Freedom Mini is a nice enough thumbboard, but it seems to lack a Shift/Fn lock, so that D-Pad isn't quite as useful as it should be. You'll want to play with xmodmap to get it to use the AltGr keys properly, and it's still lacking, so you'll be back to even more xmodmap hackery. In the end, everything *can* be made to work on it without having to play with the Bluetooth stack.

The clip is also rather flimsy, and has already partially snapped on mine.

However, it's tiny, and even when slightly broken, it's a usable combo once you learn how to cradle the combined assembly Blackberry-style.

I'd still want to test-drive the Duo for those times when I want something closer to the touch-typing experience.

I just purchased the Freedom Mini Duo. After putting it into HID mode, I can successfully pair up with it, but cannot subsequently connect. I receive a failure message each time I try. I'm running the latest update of OS 2006 and bluetooth driver, and have run out of ideas on how to connect.

There's 9/10th of your problem. Scirocco is such utter crap on so many levels that I'm not even going to get into it.

Suffice it to say, I had similar problems, and when combined with the other issues that I'd had, I decided to roll back to Mistral. No problems since I went back.

Thanks.....good suggestion. I just "downgraded" to Mistral, downloaded/installed the BT plug-in, but unfortunately got the same result - a successful pairing of devices followed by "Bluetooth Connection Failure".

Also, Mistral doesn't recognize my Kingston 2 GB RS-MMC card (at least out-of-the-box), as the latest OS had.

The Mini Duo also supports SPP, so I'm going to "upgrade" back to Scirroco, download kbdd, and give that a whirl. If that doesn't work, running a bluetooth analyzer is probably the next (and last) resort. Given that the 770 and the Freedom Mini Duo pair up but then don't connect, something is the security handshake is probably fouled up.

Did you manage to get the Freedom Duo working?

I have an N800 and manage to pair but not connect.

As I've variously reported elsewhere in this forum, I've been using the full-sized Freedom keyboard with my 770 for some time now, utilizing fanoush's KBDD hack. This keyboard is large enough for touch typing but folds in-half to a size that's the same about as the 770 itself, and fits in my Otter case fine with it (along with cabes, stand, etc.). I've not tried to further program it to use the altgr keys, so have had to do without the pipe command, which is one of the drawbacks (minor?) I've chosen to live with.

You do know that the Freedom keyboard comes with a half-decent built-in stand, don't you? It's pretty well hidden, which is why I ask.

Sorry, Karel, I need to clarify that. The stand I refer to is the one that came with the 770 and which I use to prop up the 770 separately, rather than utilize the one attached to the keyboard, as I prefer to position the 770 at a better viewing distance for me away from the keyboard itself. But you are right, the Freedom does have a built-in stand which can hold the 770 without the need to carry around the extra stand, small as it may be. Regards, Jim

(I'm apparently still in pedantic mode)
The Freedom keyboard's stand is detachable.

I'm not trying to tell you how you should use your keyboard, but the countless poor souls without a Freedom keyboard might not know this.