There used to be a company called Stowaway (I think that was the name) that made nice, handsome sturdy, folding, portable keyboards, principally for Palm devices. I own two from earlier generations of Palms and they worked great. But that was years ago. Recently my business partner wondered if there was a keyboard for his Blackberry so he could leave his laptop behind while traveling but still be able to compose missives longer than Blackberry thumbtyping comfortably allows. I looked at Amazon and bought a keyboard for him for $30 . . . oops, they're now up to $80. Same keyboard from the company that now owns Stowaway, iGo, sells on the company site for . . . $150! Anyway, bought it and tried to get it to work with his BB Curve. No wireless download for the driver! Had to download the file from the company to my computer and tried to get it into his Curve via BB Desktop manager. No go for iGo. Wouldn't transfer to the device. Couldn't get it to add into BB Desktop. But in reading the owner reviews on Amazon, I found that someone had posted a link, via their own website, to a wireless downloadable link! So, I pointed his Curve browser to the link http://marcofrom.com/bb/Stowaway.jad and miracle of miracles, Marco saved the day. Thanks Marco, and no thanks to you iGo! Your product is cheap compared to the old Stowaways, your product literature sucks, and the damn sticker you stick over the keyboard telling you how to open up the keyboard has super sticky glue that takes forever to remove! But if you really need to get an external keyboard going with your Blackberry, I think this iGo product is the only option. And Marco is a lifesaver.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
iGo Stowaway keyboard and blackberry
There used to be a company called Stowaway (I think that was the name) that made nice, handsome sturdy, folding, portable keyboards, principally for Palm devices. I own two from earlier generations of Palms and they worked great. But that was years ago. Recently my business partner wondered if there was a keyboard for his Blackberry so he could leave his laptop behind while traveling but still be able to compose missives longer than Blackberry thumbtyping comfortably allows. I looked at Amazon and bought a keyboard for him for $30 . . . oops, they're now up to $80. Same keyboard from the company that now owns Stowaway, iGo, sells on the company site for . . . $150! Anyway, bought it and tried to get it to work with his BB Curve. No wireless download for the driver! Had to download the file from the company to my computer and tried to get it into his Curve via BB Desktop manager. No go for iGo. Wouldn't transfer to the device. Couldn't get it to add into BB Desktop. But in reading the owner reviews on Amazon, I found that someone had posted a link, via their own website, to a wireless downloadable link! So, I pointed his Curve browser to the link http://marcofrom.com/bb/Stowaway.jad and miracle of miracles, Marco saved the day. Thanks Marco, and no thanks to you iGo! Your product is cheap compared to the old Stowaways, your product literature sucks, and the damn sticker you stick over the keyboard telling you how to open up the keyboard has super sticky glue that takes forever to remove! But if you really need to get an external keyboard going with your Blackberry, I think this iGo product is the only option. And Marco is a lifesaver.
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12 comments:
You and Marco saved my life - well you got it working anyway. Thanks to you and Marco.
Marco - help!! My 8830 Blackberry takes me to the driver stowaway.jad and this downloads but when I try to open this and download the driver I get an error message of "download failed" with details "907 Invalid COD - file not found" Am I doing something wrong? Thanks much.
Mary
Thanks to this driver and some diligence, I got this working with my blackberry pearl 8100. A few other details needed.
After you install this Java driver. You need to Set all of the connection permissions for the driver to ALLOW.
You then need to press and hold CTRL, Blue (Fn) and Green (Fn) key on the stowaway to put it in Bluetooth discover mode. (A green light will start blinking on the top left of the keyboard.
You then need to go to the stowaway program on the BB. Using the menu key, select "Connect" to device.
If all is good, the you will see the stowaway as a device. Click Enter on the BB.
You will then be asked to enter the device permission key. You can set this to whatever you want. I used 0000
As soon as you enter 0000 and press Enter on the blackberry. You will need to enter 0000 and OK on the keyboard. (You do this by holding the Blue (Fn) key down and entering 0000 and ENTER on the keyboard.
Again, if all is well, you will get a message that the device is paired.
You may get a message on your BB when you go to use your keyboard asking if you want to allow the device to connect. There will be a checkbox in this message "Do not ask this again" I checked that box and since then everything as been working. You will need to experiment with the keyboard to discover what keys to use at different times and in different applications on the BB.
I hope this helps someone out there.
Thank you, thank you for posting this information. It worked and was a lifesaver.
RIM now has a BlackBerry keyboard listed on their own site: LINK
Hopefully this "Freedom Universal" keyboard on RIM's own site has easier setup. I haven't used it. Here's a link to the company: LINK
Your tips helped a great deal, thanks very much! But to make things even a bit more complicated, what can I do to make my "QWERT" keyboard work as well? Because although paired up, when typing on the BB I get the anglo-saxon keyboard setting... Can anyone give me a clue?
Thanks!! Michael
Just DL'd the macro to a BB Pearl but when I try to run it I get an error "Uncaught exception - Layout Requested During Layout" Looks like it won't work with the Pearl which is a bummer.
Sorry folks. Thanks for the comments, but I don't have any more updates or information on these issues.
I've been searching around for a way to get a Stowaway bluetooth keyboard working with my e71 (seems to dislike sis files) and I had to add to everyone's gratitude mate. Cheers for the post, everything is working nicely now after your explanation.
The link to the java version doesn't work anymore. I tried to navigate to the jad, and it came up with the details of the file, but then when it went to download the jar file, it said page not found. :(
Please can someone upload it again, or send it to me.
I have a Nokia E71 and have a similar request for locating the driver... I am new to setting up drivers on E71. Any tip or link that can help would also be much appreciated.... Thx.
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