Home Reviews HowTo	Microsoft Wireless Desktop Review By Dorene Stalter: December 31, 2003 Have you ever had to stop and reposition your mouse? Have you had to tug on the cord to be able to move it where you wanted? Have you ever wanted to move your keyboard a little so you could get more comfortable – but that cord just won’t let it go? The Microsoft Wireless Desktop is the perfect solution. I got my Wireless Desktop the day before Christmas. With everything else going on, I thought that it might be a good idea to wait until after Christmas to try to hook it up. But I am not a patient person. I opened the box and pulled out the keyboard and mouse.
	It looked easy enough. Just turn off your computer, unhook the existing keyboard and mouse, hook the new ones in, turn the computer back on and install the software. I couldn’t resist. Five minutes later, I was using my new Wireless Desktop.
The Keyboard The keyboard is very comfortable. The extra buttons (My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, Mute, Media, Mail, Web Home and Messenger) provide one touch access to your most used folders/apps. These buttons can be reprogrammed. But these weren’t what impressed me the most. The F keys have taken on a new life. Most people that I know simply remember that F1 takes you to the Help menu – but they don’t bother to learn what the other F keys can do. On the Wireless Desktop, the F Keys function as normal while the F Lock is on. But, turn the F Lock key off, and you can use the keys to do a lot of other tasks such as undo, redo, open a new document, and close a document. You can reply to, forward and send e-mail. Use spellchecker, save and print any document or web page. Don’t think that you can remember all the keys? They are marked! And the software allows you to reprogram the keys to do other tasks. One other nice feature with the keyboard is printing on the front side of keys used in combination with the Ctrl key. For instance, the "B" key says BOLD, the "C" key says COPY, the “V” key says PASTE…. The Mouse The mouse isn’t quite as cool as they keyboard. But it does have some very good features. It is a scroll mouse with 2 buttons. "Tilt Wheel" technology, gives you the ability to scroll not only up-and-down, but side-to-side as well. Performance and Quality The keyboard gets high marks. The features are superior to any standard keyboard and we found no difference in response time from a standard keyboard. Microsoft claims that you can use the Wireless Desktop up to 6 feet away from the hub. We found that 6 feet was about as far as we could move it and still see the monitor. Yes, I spent a nice evening curled up in an easy chair working on the computer. I moved to about 12 feet away and still was able to work on my document – although I could not see the monitor. The mouse gets high marks also. It was a little heavier than I was used to, but that seemed to make it more stable. The “Tilt Wheel” was useful and the design made it extremely comfortable to use. Conclusion Microsoft’s latest Wireless Desktop is a great desktop combination which enables anyone to have useful wireless functions at an affordable price. This new design gives the user more control, more desk space and more freedom. Where to buy Amazon If you would like to post a Book Review on our site, send me the review using the Contact link. You can set the topic if you like, or just let me set it when I go to approve it.