Brief Summary:
I've used this for the past couple weeks with an old IMac (mid-2009) and OS X El Capitan v. 10.11.4 and so far it has worked flawlessly.
Backstory:
Several months ago, I purchased a refurbished iMac and a macbook air in order to use Scrivener and Ulysses for a writing project. I bought a bluetooth Apple Magic Mouse for the macbook and fell in love with it -- it's solidly built and I love the gestures. The macbook air has bluetooth built into the laptop, but the iMac is old enough to lack it. I wanted to upgrade the iMac to use a wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse and, after reading through a couple hours of reviews, decided to give the Kinivo a whirl.
I'm embarrassed to even use the word "installation" for this thing -- all you do is plug it in to an unused USB port and, at least with OS X, Bob's your uncle. It just works. There's a little LED light thingie on the side that let's you know that it's powered up and ready to do its thing.
Pairing the iMac with the
Apple Wireless Keyboard with Apple Magic Bluetooth Mouse (Certified Refurbished)
was easy -- click on the little apple icon in the upper left hand corner of the top level menu bar, then System Preferences... Bluetooth... and a dialog box pops up that lets you see what devices it has discovered. I picked the keyboard, then the mouse, and that was that. They both just worked.
Have there been any issues so far? Not really.
It took me a bit to figure out that when the iMac was sleeping, I could click on the power button on the side of the keyboard and then hit the "fn" button to wake it up. The keyboard works almost immediately. I've discovered that it can take a few seconds for the mouse to be discovered, so I have to be a bit patient with it from time to time. I've also discovered that if I turn the mouse off and forget to turn it back on before starting or waking the system up, I'm without a mouse. No fears, however... if I turn the mouse on, jiggle it a bit, and sit back and wait for a moment, a dialog box generally comes up and informs me that it's looking for a mouse. When it locates it, it generally takes a few seconds for the mouse to pair up. Then I'm good for the rest of the session.
I've also tried this with a cheap pair of BT headphones -- I'm kind of regretting the purchase, but the cans work OK I suppose. As a musician and wannabee cheapo audiophile, the cheap BT headphones sound horrible for music, but they're usable if all I'm doing is listening to anime on crunchyroll or watching a news reel on CNN.
Anyway, the point of this is that this little BT dongle thingie has worked great so far. I didn't have to install any software -- on OS X 10 it just works and it's worked pretty much flawlessly once I figured out its minor idiosyncrasies.
Would I buy another one? Absolutely. Being able to add bluetooth functionality to an old iMac for $12 is a killer deal.
Would I recommend this to someone else? Absolutely and without hesitation. If you need BT and you have an open USB port, you're golden.
| Brand | Kinivo |
|---|---|
| Item model number | BTD-300 |
| Operating System | Mac Os,Vista,Windows 7 |
| Item Weight | 1.44 ounces |
| Product Dimensions | 5 x 5 x 5 inches |
| Item Dimensions LxWxH | 5 x 5 x 5 inches |
| Manufacturer | Kinivo |
| ASIN | B005Z5HT2M |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Date First Available | October 24, 2011 |
