I own a Dell KM113 wireless keyboard and mouse combo. Surprisingly enough, the mouse has a power off button while the keyboard does not. I power off the mouse whenever I power off the PC. But, I cannot turn off my keyboard.

They keyboard wakes up my PC if it's asleep. The keyboard also automatically "connects" to my PC every time I turn the latter back on. It makes me suspect that the keyboard batteries are being used up - even when the PC is off - in searching any probable connection.

So, my question: Does my wireless keyboard use up battery even when the PC's off?

Note: The other question is about a working receiver, mine is about a receiver that's off.

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2 Answers

In practice, it probably goes into some kind of low power mod, or turns completely off until you press a key

Leaving it on all the time, and checking if there's a signal is pretty dumb. Its detecting the dongle (already paired to the keyboard/mouse), and presumably pairs fast enough not to be noticed.

Its pretty hard to check that without sniffing at local wireless traffic, but its a common, well documented trick to ensure longer lives for batteries in such devices.

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I think the buttons of the keyboard serve dual purpose: an on/off switch as well as the usual purpose of the keyboard itself.

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