First Impression:
Damn, this thing is heavy. No manual? No disk? No batteries? (The missing manual says they should be there.) At least the receiver was in the battery compartment. (It's a refurb, which must be why it was lacking any extras whatsoever.) Oh well, just download it from the source, right?
OK, throw in some batteries, and plug in the receiver. It took forever for the software to install, and for some reason, the installation of the Unifying Receiver driver failed repeatedly on my desktop machine. I could not test it at all. I went a-Googlin' and found out that the "smart" installer is not so smart, and that I should go straight to the 64-bit-only installer. It still hung. It also trashed the sensitivity settings for my (also Logitech) mouse.
I tried it on the laptop, and it worked first thing. I didn't even have to fetch the software (now sitting on the NAS box). Both are 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium, so it's not the OS. Oh well, give it a shot... and it works pretty well actually.
Be aware that when it is switched on, the power LED goes out after about five seconds. This does not indicate a malfunction, and the unit should be working just fine.
In Service:
The weight is quite handy for what it was made to do, which is sit on your lap while you control a multimedia PC, and this is exactly how I use my laptop the majority of the time. The only minor gripe I have is that there is almost no space between the last row and the edge of the case (maybe 6-7 mm). That means if you're lying down, knees up, the keyboard sliding down into your lap can easily cause the spacebar or other bottom row keys to be pressed inadvertently. I kept pausing my Youtube video watching this way, and it took me a little while to figure out why. You may have to set it aside to prevent this, or split open a small hose and run it along the bottom.
When I switched it back to the desktop machine for another run, everything installed correctly and it works fine now.
The F-keys are switched to their secondary functions by default, but this can be overridden in the driver. You can also assign functions to each of the first six function keys if you wish, but if you assign them the role of F-keys directly this way, modifier combos do not work. That is, if you decide to leave them all in their Fn-locked state except F4, and change F4 back all by itself, it'll work fine -- as F4. It won't work as Ctrl-F4 or Alt-F4. The modifiers work fine if you switch them ALL back.
The software also lets you disable "dangerous" keys like CapsLock and Ins if you choose, but only the ones on their list.
You may have noticed that the keys have been relocated. This was quite easy. I used the file portion of nail clippers to slip under the side of the scissor stabilizer. Go in just above center from either side, and slide down to get above the "X", then dig a bit deeper and slide back up to pop off the top clips. Once the key swings up, it's a simple matter to pull it off the bottom clips.
There are no markings for Home, End, PgUp, or PgDn, but they are there as the Fn layer of the arrow keys. Why they didn't bother to silk-screen them on is beyond me. There is also no dedicated Menu key (it's Fn+Right Ctrl), which typically doesn't matter to me, but in this particular application, I use it every once in a while.
So how does it feel?
The keyboard feels just like it looks, like a reasonably high quality chiclet laptop keyboard. I wouldn't want to type on it all day, every day, but for typing a few minutes at a time, or maybe even a half hour at a time, it does just fine. The keys are not flat, but slightly concave, helping to center the fingers. I wish my laptop had them.
The touchpad is a bit of a strange beast. It has two completely different methods of being clicked -- tapping, and pressing. Taps work just like the trackpad on any laptop, including two-finger taps for right-click and three-finger taps for middle-click. Multi-touch gestures work as well, and I have no problem scrolling with it. Pinching and expanding is a bit temperamental though -- if you are the type who barely moves one of the two fingers for this gesture, it won't work. Both must be moved roughly equally or it won't recognize it. (It has always been my habit to plant my thumb and pinch or expand with the index finger. That does not work on this touchpad.)
Clicks can be made anywhere on the surface, with only moderately more pressure than used to tap. If you tap too zealously, in fact, you may find yourself clicking instead, and two-finger clicks DON'T register the same (right click) as two finger taps. [EDIT: Actually, they do, except that the finger spacing necessary to recognize a right click is slightly wider than that necessary to recognize a two-finger tap.] You'll have to learn not to tap too hard [and/or spread your fingertips]. Clicking in the lower right corner registers as a right click. Clicking anywhere else is a left click. Clicking in the dead center of the bottom is considerably stiffer than clicking anywhere else, maybe because they have some sort of fulcrum there to distinguish between left and right clicks.
Holding a finger in the click corner and dragging with another works fine, and is generally how I drag selections or relocate windows.
The balance is quite good. The trackpad, with its spring-loaded clicking, is naturally fairly heavy, but the center of gravity of the whole unit is still right smack in the middle (a bit toward the back, but dead center in the left-right axis). Someone actually paid attention to this detail and didn't sacrifice it for cost. This means that although it's heavy, it won't try to twist out of your hand in unexpected ways when you pick it up, or fall over if you lean it against something by the "wrong end" (because there is no wrong end).
Summary (tl;dr)
The keyboard portion is not bad at all, if a little bit quirky. It's quite suitable for the alternate layout types among us. The keys are easy to remove, even easier to put back on, and they didn't do anything strange like rotating the F and J scissors.
The trackpad is also kinda quirky, but quite functional once you get used to it. It's large, responsive, and handles multitouch pretty well (except for that pinch/expand thing I mentioned).
The software is a bit buggy, but if you can get it to install at all, you should be golden.
I think this would be a bit extravagant at the MSRP of around $100. The street price is closer to $75 though, which isn't unreasonable. If you can get it for $36 as I did, it's definitely worth the money.