I wasn't able to reproduce this issue using an UltraComboEditor with a few items added to it, the DropDownStyle set to DropDownList, and the DropDownWidth set to -1 (which didn't seem to do anything). Are there any other conditions that you have to reproduce this issue? The first thing that I would recommend is that you have the latest hotfix to see if that fixes anything.
-Matt
The issue centers around having a row in the datasource with null member values. This results in a blank row shown in the combobox, but the comparison logic fails since it's a null item being compared to a keystroke letter (string) value...