Getting a better keyboard for my HTPC for free

The keyboard and built in keypad that comes with the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo EV 2535 is less than optimal. It misses characters and it's difficult to navigate the mouse pointer precisely. (You kinda think this would be a standard feature on a wireless keyboard.) After having read Johannes's recommendations (post in Swedish) I wanted to buy a better keyboard+mouse combination.

But why? I have several alternative input devices laying around already (iPod touch and two laptops). Why not remote control the computer with those instead?

Reading up on different solutions VNC seems the way to go. It's open and cross-platform and you can get clients for OS X, Windows, and even iPod touch. But the server doesn't seem to work on Vista. Then I found TouchPad Pro, which seems like an excellent application for the touch and their installation instructions did mention Vista.

So I installed it. And it did work.

All that remained was to get a good VNC client for the Macbook and here Jolly's Fast VNC fit the bill. Now I can remote control my HTPC from my laptop and I don't have to rely on the finicky keyboard that came with the HTPC. Instead I use the excellent MacBook keyboard and trackpad. I think I need to configure the keyboard layout since accented characters are not where you expect them.

To sum it up: don't believe everything you read on the web. You can use TightVNC in Vista.

Next step will probably be to get the TouchPad pro application once it hits the AppStore (I haven't bothered to jailbreak my 2.0 iPod Touch) and use the iPod as a remote.