To go along with my new Dell laptop (reviewed later), I wanted a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Bluetooth, you may know, is a wireless technology that connects devices — in this case, my laptop with the keyboard and mouse.

So after looking around, I ended up buying this bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo from Rocketfish.

It comes with a full keyboard, mouse and bluetooth USB dongle that acts as the receiver for both devices (I prefer my MacBook Pro laptop, which doesn’t require dongles to use bluetooth). After plugging in the dongle, you push a button on the bottom of both devices, which connects with the dongle attached to the computer. I had some trouble getting the devices to show up in Windows Vista, the operating system for my laptop. The instructions weren’t very clear, and were out of date.

Eventually, though, I got everything working. The keyboard was comfortable to use, and had keys for often-used functionality like volume controls, on each side. The mouse is not particularly solid; I found that the back battery cover kept coming off, not wanting to stay set in place.

Problems began the day after I first installed the devices. When I fired up my computer, Windows didn’t recognize the keyboard and mouse anymore. They reverted to generic, default devices with limited functionality. For instance, the scroll wheel on the mouse no longer works. When I went to the Rocketfish Web site to get the latest drivers to hopefully cure the problem, I found that there were none.

Given these problems, along with poor product support and documentation, I can’t recommend this bluetooth combination. It has promise, but that promise is so far unfulfilled.