I have no doubt that the DiNovo Mini is brilliant with a PC. As soon as it arrived at my office, I had it up and running in XP without any more effort than plugging in the Bluetooth receiver. Mouse control, character entry, menu use, et cetera were all great.

Unfortunately, I bought this for my PS3.

I primarily wanted the DiNovo Mini for PS3 browser use. Browsing with a virtual keyboard is intensely annoying, so a keyboard is the only option for extended use. As a character entry and mouse control device, the Mini works great with the PS3. There are button mappings for the cross and circle buttons, allowing for basic selection and cancellation controls.

Where the Mini fails, however, is that it does not seem to have anything mapped to the triangle [new info - see Update below], square, and Start controls. Triangle is used to access menus all over the PS3 interface, including the PS3 browser menu. Want to access your bookmarks with the Mini? What you’ll need to do is grab a PS3 controller to do it. Want to type in a URL? Pick up a PS3 controller, press Start, and then pick up the Mini and do your typing.

Outside of the browser, the Mini also fails as a Blu-Ray playback controller. To access menus during playback, one must use the square button. Again, not on the Mini so grab a controller to pull up that menu. Want to skip to the next chapter? The controls on the Mini do forward and reverse seek only when used with a PS3. Grab a controller and use L1/R2.

There are so many occasions when you’re reaching for a controller that it makes the Mini near useless. For $150, I expected a lot more from a device that has a PS3 mode. I would have been better off buying a cheap little controller mounted keypad.

I think the keyboard itself is fantastic. Great form factor, loved the lighting schemes, and it controls a PC like a champ. But if your intended use is as an input for a PS3, do not buy it unless you’re okay juggling both a controller and the Mini.

UPDATE: An anonymous commenter on my mirror of this entry on LiveJournal left a tip that the right mouse button is often used to emulate triangle button functionality. Using that info, I went back to the Mini and figured out how to do right mouse button - hold down the Function key and press the OK button. This does, indeed, act as a triangle button trigger. This will give you access to the menus in the browser and the overlay menu during Blu-Ray playback. Using these menus, you can get to the functions that would otherwise be more easily access using square and Start, but at least they are accessible. The Mini isn’t nearly so bad now.