Windows Phone Thoughts: Don't Go Away Without Your Stowaway - iGo Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard Reviewed

The Installation
Installation was far more difficult than it should have been or even needed to be. Drivers and configuration applications are loaded from an included CD through your desktop and installed to the mobile device using ActiveSync or WMDC. I installed the drivers on my Loox N560 and attempted to connect to the Stowaway, but all of my best efforts were fruitless. I even tried pairing the devices through Bluetooth Manager, which I was able to do, but I still was unable to use the keyboard. Just to see if I could get anything to work, I tried installing the software on my Blackjack (WM 5 Smartphone). At least the Blackjack was able to connect to the Stowaway, although I found that in using it, the Shift and Caps Lock keys were inoperative.

I was just about ready to give up on the review when it occurred to me to check for an updated driver. Lo and behold, there was one, and after installing it, the N560 was able to connect and it appeared to work as specified.

Now I understand that early drivers can have some problems. However, I expect that the included drivers should at least provide basic functionality and later drivers serve as bug fixes and to provide enhanced features, not as the means to get the product to even work in the first place. I'm a tech head and pretty competent at troubleshooting and even I struggled with the problems that I had with the initial drivers. I imagine that less technically inclined owners might not be able to work their way through these issues and may give up and return the keyboard. At any rate, there's no excuse for shipping such non-functional drivers with a product and iGo gets a big slap on the wrist for doing so.

Configuration

Figure 5: It gets much simpler from here...

Once I had the updated drivers, things went much more smoothly. After specifying the product that you're configuring, you see the screen in Figure 5. All I did from this screen was to tap on the Enable button. The defaults as displayed worked perfectly fine, so I didn't need to tweak them.


Figure 6: Getting connected.

After tapping on Enable in the previous screen, you're presented with the screen in Figure 6. This screen gives lots of help in getting connected, with the status being displayed at the top and instructions in the larger box below. For example, one thing you need to do is to disable the built-in HID drivers. The instruction screen told me that and a button appeared that allowed me to disable those drivers.


Figure 7: So many shortcuts that it's like being on a road trip...

The configuration software allows you do set user-defined shortcut keys that can execute programs, hit the OK button, call up menus, open a file and more.