Use the Targus Multimedia Remote with OS X

Jul 21, '05 08:30:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

If you are like me and do a lot of presentations, having a good presentation remote is important. I've tried quite a few of the presenters on the market. Targus recently came out with the AMP01US Wireless Multimedia Presenter, which includes a (relatively) bright laser pointer and trackball mouse in a nice package. Regular AAA batteries make sure it has good power for the laser and are easily replaceable. It's Windows only, though. But as with most things, you can get it working on a Mac. Here's how to get it to work in Tiger (and probably prior OS releases):

  1. Your Mac thinks the USB dongle is an entire keyboard accessory. The Keyboard Assistant immediately pops up when you plug it in, and this is very annoying. You can disable automatic keyboard detection to prevent this. See this hint for more information on how to do that.

  2. Next, install USB Overdrive, which enables many USB mice that wouldn't otherwise work on OS X. I've tried the Presenter with and without it, and it doesn't work using OS X alone.
Basically, the Presenter works fine for me. Once in a while, the mouse quits working. I haven't figured this one out yet, but you just have to pull the dongle out and plug it back in. It doesn't happen very often. Also, when I first plugged it in, it took a few minutes for it to come up. I just plugged it in and waited while I worked. Now it comes up immediately, and USB Overdrive lets you change the pointer speed and other settings.

BTW, I don't work for Targus or USB Overdrive. I do, however, do a lot of presentations, and a full-featured, good remote is important to me.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2005071311051790