Tech Goes Boom

Microsoft Wireless Desktop Comfort Edition

Microsoft has released a new keyboard and mouse combination, and once again, have eschewed wired USB ergonomic keyboards for wireless only. This new ergonomic design is available only in the wireless version, and only with the bundled wireless mouse.

I have been using Microsoft ergonomic keyboards for a few years now. They offer good value for sturdy reliable hardware. So I decided it was time to upgrade my keyboard and try out the new offering on my mac.

The keyboard is surprisingly light when you take it out of the box, and batteries are included for both the keyboard and mouse. The Keyboard comes with a software CD for both PC and Mac. I installed the drivers and restarted. Two system preferences are installed, one for the keyboard and one for the mouse.

The software enables the wide variety of special keys on the keyboard including control for system volume, and controlling itunes. There are also keys for launching mail, ichat, safari, ical and your documents folder. There are also 5 custom buttons that you can set to launch whatever you want. The calculator, log out and sleep buttons do exactly what they describe. There is also a very cool new control for zooming in and out in digital photos. This works in preview, photoshop and it looks like any application that uses command - and + to zoom, this includes safari. For those of us who spend a lot of time in Photoshop, this is a really cool thing.

The keyboard itself has wandered away from the spilt ergonomic design and has instead evolved into a curved design utilizing curved and elongated center keys. For those used to normal ergo keyboards, this does take some getting used to. After a few hours, I was typing normally again. The keyboard feels small, but is roughly the same size as previous designs. The gray and black finish complements the G5 very well.

Key travel is shorter than previous designs and is very plush. No clackety clack here. It is also very quiet, so it shouldn't be making a lot of noise for fast typists in quiet offices.

The mouse has a good feel in the hand like previous models, but is sadly lacking in buttons. It has only the normal left and right buttons along with a wheel. For a keyboard with so many buttons and options, this mouse seems drastically out of place and will not be replacing my logitec MX 500. The people interested in buying this keyboard would not buy this mouse, and it's a shame that MS made this decision. I would really have liked to have seen this keyboard offered alone for $50 instead of bundling it with this lousy mouse.

All told, this is a great keyboard, and worth the price of the bundle. With less and less ergonomic keyboards on the market, it's nice to see Microsoft coming out with new products that cater to this market. While I would have liked to have seen it alone, and wired, it's still worth the money and the batteries.