Freedom Universal Keyboard Drivers

Sometimes, I come across a company and a product that is so brilliant in concept yet so ineptly executed that I wonder who on earth could have authorised the policy to 'annoy our users to the verge of rage'.

One such company is Freedom Input who have a range of half-decent mobile keyboards. The problem comes when you try and use a keyboard for the first time. Downloading and installing the drivers is a little tedious, but that is not the problem.

The problem comes when you have to activate the drivers in a way that makes WindowsXP and Vista look positively friendly. You see, on the back of your paper manual (you didn't throw that away now did you?) is a unique code for your device. That, along with another unique code which appears on the device's screen must be entered into the Freedom Input website and then you wait for a code which will activate the drivers on your device.

That is a pain. What's more of a pain is when you're told by the website that your codes are invalid and you have to raise a support ticket. In my case, I was four days with a dead bluetooth keyboard before I got a response and now that I have yet another PocketPC to play with, I am annoyed that I may have to wait another four days before I can use the keyboard on that.

Being so long without the use of a product that cost the best part of £60 is a little annoying, to say the least.

They argue on their forums that the reason for this hoop jumping just to use a keyboard is that other manufacturers are trying to steal their software to power their keyboards. While I can understand that it can be annoying to have someone steal your software, I'd argue that first of all, I bought the keyboard for the keyboard and not the pretty software and second, there's this thing called 'law' which would bring any thieves to account if they decided to do some driver-pilfering.

In my opinion, their argument is weak and it still looks like they are deliberately trying to make things as complicated as possible for their customers. I, for one, would not have bought this keyboard if I'd known about this hassle and the next time I buy a product, I will do proper research even into the kind of things that I would take for granted on other platforms.

On the whole, it;s a nice keyboard - it's just a shame there's so much hassle in trying to get it to work.

Update
Sheesh, I'm only three posts into my new blog and I'm already having to correct myself. While the full-on drivers do have to be unlocked, the keyboard can actually operate using the generic built in drivers found in many mobile devices.

While I would argue that the manufacturer should at least mention this and not force me to go Googling, I was wrong and so this is my correction. I won't call it an apology though but that's because I'm too pig-headed ;-)