Whilst tidying up I moved the computer and managed to break the wireless dongle for the keyboard and mouse. I only have a small fold down desk in the workshop and a full size keyboard covers nearly all of it. I found a replacement mini keyboard and mouse set from Maplins – Cerulian Mini Deskset ref:N69JX.
This deskset comes with a mini dongle that only sticks out about 6mm so I shouldn’t be able to snap it off like the old one! The keyboard has quite a nice action and takes up very little desk space so should be fine for the small amount of use it will get in the workshop. As an added benefit it comes with a thin moulded silicone plastic cover, which I assume is packing, but will serve very nicely as an oil proof membrane as it is sufficiently transparent to see the keys through and very flexible. The mouse has a power saving feature and powers down after a few minutes of being idle, just click to wake it up.
UPDATE April 2015 – I bought another of these for use with my desktop computer, I notice that Maplins now sell it under their own name. With more use I have noticed that if you don’t hit the keys centrally sometimes a key will stick slightly, this doesn’t bother me particularly but a typist would probably find it annoying. I also tried it out with my so called “smart tv” it works OK but the range is not really more than about 2 metres for a reliable connection.