We all know guys love gadgets and executives like flash gadgets that they can show off while bored in a hotel lobby or bar to other fellow bored execs. So what better than a funky cool mouse and keypad that work wirelessly and come from a good stable like Logitech?

So there we were gawping at what looked like the Logitech Di Novo keypad but without the main keyboard section when we realised this was in fact the Logitech V250 mouse and pad combo. In effect this is a best of offering for laptop users who want a little more comfort and function instead of slaving away over a hot track pad.

After installing the USB dongle and software our laptop quickly found the mouse giving us wire free pointing which while nice isn't exactly ground breaking, the smart bit is the keypad. The numeric pad has an LCD display allowing it to be used without sight of your laptop, this is ideal for driving multimedia applications and impressing those other execs at the bar as your fire off windows media player from a distance.

The numerical pad can be used in a  number of ways, first up it can be an extension of the normal keypad while tying, it can also work independently as a calculator with the results sent back to notepad on the laptop and finally it can drive a host of multimedia applications. The LCD also shows the date and time and can be used to display messages from popular chat applications like MSN messenger.

After using the V250 mouse and pad for a few hours it was quickly relegated to just being a wireless mouse with the pad getting little use apart from controlling MP3 playback and we guess that's the way the majority of these sets will end up. There is also something quite annoying about the USB dongle which protrudes from the side of the laptop looking both untidy and vulnerable at the same time, especially when a number of laptops now have Bluetooth built in which may have provided a better way to link the mouse and pad rather than RF.

Priced at £60 its not too expensive but it is squarely a gift idea and one that will impress in the short term but be consigned to the laptop bag before too long, while the wireless mouse continues to get used.

Published - 19/05/2005

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