Say you’ve got a netbook and an iPad… and you don’t want to lug around an external keyboard for typing on the iPad. Enter the PLX Technology USB Duet, which you can use to essentially turn your netbook into an overpriced, power-hungry iPad keyboard. As an added bonus, it will let you transfer photos from your netbook to your iPad.
The USB Duet is designed to let you copy and sync files between two computers. But if you use the iPad Camera Connection Kit, you can plug in the Duet cable and connect the other end to your netbook to link the two portable devices.
Honestly, I can’t think of any reason you would want to do this instead of using an Apple keyboard or a third party solution for the iPad. But it’s still pretty darn cool.
One caveat: The USB Duet uses a mini-USB port, which is something that most netbooks don’t actually have. In order to demonstrate the trick, PLX Technology brought a Japanese Fujitsu laptop to the Netbook Summit in San Francisco this week.
