Oct 24
I don’t have time for a complicated MLS key…
OK. so last week all of the Austin Board of Realtor members had to change in their dKeys for the new, the wonderful, the unnecessary ActiveKey.
Why? I don’t know.
I loved my dKey. It was simple, small, had a great battery life, and worked. Yes, it did have to be placed in a charger to synch with the server and allow you to access lock boxes, but since everyone had a cradle and became accustomed to using the cradle to charge/synch, routine set in very quickly. Come home from a day of work, plop your keys down, cradle your dKey, take off shoes, relax. No big deal.
My first reaction to seeing the new and wonderful ActiveKey, was why the hell is it so big? Then I picked t up. Uh oh. It’s flimsy. Basically, we now have a Jitterbug ActiveKey. You know the Jitterbug. The phone for the elderly who can’t figure out new fangled feature rich cell phones.
Check out the side by side..
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Ok. Maybe I’m being too harsh. So I thought I’d give it a try.
The battery lasts about a day and a half if not plugged in, so doing away with the cradle is pretty much moot now since you have to plug the thing in every day anyway.
I went to show a house this morning and when I tried to turn on the key…. nothing. It had been plugged in all night. So I plugged it into the car charger and tried to turn it on. I was greeted with a descending tone, but no lights. Grr.. So I called the supra folks and I need to find a paperclip or needle (both of which I regularly carry on me) to reset the key. Dug through my glove box and found a piece of wire that would do. Reset and tried to turn it on. It came on, but with a low battery warning. Apparently, it didn’t charge, hold a charge, or the charger is broken.
Basically, I’d rather have my dkey back.
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I did find it funny that GE advertises that the key is design by agents. I’m not sure that’s a great selling feature, but whatever.
Hey GE… what can you do to make this Activekey thing better? I’ve got a few suggestions.
- higher capacity battery
- reduce the size, technology gets smaller, not larger
- back light the keypad for 30 seconds when a key is pressed, if it’s dark I can’t see the back light key to turn the back light on
- remove the on/off key, GE meatball button, and the backlight key to reduce the size of the unit
- how about a toggle switch for on/off if you need one, seems like any key pressed could turn the unit on and a timeout could turn it off
- keys that press, click, or something to let you know that you clicked them
- reset that doesn’t need a needle or paperclip to work, think hold keys 1,4,7 or something like that
- how about a color? if a real estate professional designed this it would be more pleasing to the eye :)
November 15th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I agree Joe, this thing is a joke. What was the point and what did it accomplish. I think the intended benefit was to free us from the cradle, but the battery life is so poor you can’t really get it beyond the range of the nearest extension cord. The battery is dead every time I pick it up. The old key was less tethered than this thing is. And the keyboard? The last time I saw a membrane keyboard like that was on the old Atari-400 computer that I had back in the early 80s.
This is more about ABoR doing what is good for ABoR instead of the Agents who pay their salary. I guess they got tired of waiting for the agents to park their old key so they could get their data. I can’t wait for the deployment of the upgraded SAFEMLS solution. I’m going to miss keeping track of the Secure Computing dongle.
November 17th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Hey Walt.. I got a replacement charger for my ActiveKey from ABOR. I took the old charger and ran it against my multimeter and sure enough it was defective putting out over twice the voltage that it should have been. We’ll see how this ill designed device works now that it has a working power supply. Pray for us. hahah :)
Joe