Microsoft mice and keyboards. Tilt...

SOFTWARE OR IN THIS CASE HARDWARE FIRM Microsoft has never been shy about introducing new keyboard and mouse technology to the general public. Off the top of my head, it put out the first PC mouse, the first mass produced ergonomic keyboard, and the first scroll wheel mouse. Innovation at MS hardware is quite real. Recently, they made a lot of noise about the new Tilt Wheel technology, basically a scroll wheel that also rocks side to side for horizontal scrolling. This one could be very good or very bad, the only way to find out is to try it.

Late last week, MS sent me a Wireless Optical Desktop Elite, the keyboard and mouse combo, both of which have the tilt wheel. It seems both MS and Logitech have run out of adjectives to describe keyboards, and have come to the conclusion that Elite is the new word to sell product. The keyboard and mouse are both that grey/black/silver color combination that has become so trendy, the look is clean and neat. To top it off, the keys are semi-transparent grey plastic, so you can see some of the mechanicals below. I like it.

It has all the usual keys, and an assortment of extra ones. There are the ubiquitous browsing and mail keys, multimedia keys, and a handy row of 5 programmable keys that you can do with what you will. All of the keys can be mapped to just about any function that you can think of, from a command to a file or folder. Some of them are a bit less flexible than others, but nothing objectionable. 5 shortcut keys should keep all but the most needy of the power users happy.

There is one problem though, the same problem that the Logitech Elite keyboard suffered from, those damnable function keys. The F1-F12 keys are no longer function keys, but programmable buttons which let you mimic the function keys if you have the F-Lock on. Can't they set these things to F1-F12 by default, and let you turn on the added functionality manually? Does every modern keyboard suffer from this blight? If any reader knows how to turn this off, please let me know.

The next thing about the keyboard is the wrist rest. Normally, these are flimsy plastic parts that someday look forward to being called trim. They are the first thing I throw out. This one is part of the keyboard, and has "the feel of leather". For the first day of use, it was way to slippery, my hands slowly crept toward my lap with every key press. By day 2 the sheen started wearing off, and it got more grippy, so I have faith that this one will be just fine in a day or 2 more. While I am not a wrist-rest convert yet, it certainly has opened my eyes a bit.

The wireless functionality has been rather flawless, no misses or dropped keystrokes in 3 days, and the range is more than adequate for use in my house. There is no lag, and games work well enough, but I am far from a counterstrike god. Mame and Tempest works well enough to be as close to the arcade as any keyboard can, the lag demons appear to be exorcised.

The keyboard has a tilt scroll wheel, but more on that later, it works the same as the one on the mouse with one exception, for some inexplicable reason, the wheel on the keyboard doesn't have a press to click feature. It is possible, the mouse can do it. Not a huge oversight, you can probably program any of the 25 extra keys to do a middle click, but still, it makes you wonder.

Moving on to the mouse, I must admit that I am not a fan of any of the previous MS mice that have come my way since the melted soap bars of the past, I have been sold on the Logitech Marble Mouse trackball. Other than a longing from scroll wheel, it has kept me more than happy. The MS Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0A is the first one that fits my hand well, nothing feels out of place, and the wheel falls under the right finger. For once, I don't hit the two extra thumb buttons every time I twitch, this mouse is "right" for me.

The reason for this review, the Tilt Wheel, is a good thing. The wheel, tilt aside is a big step forward in its own right. The MS wheels of the past with what seems to be 4 detents for a single rotation are gone. The old "clunk clunk clunk thud" which brings you a page and a half down is gone, replaced by a gooey feel without any obvious feedback about the amount moved. There is a good amount of resistance, enough to keep your finger from moving the wheel inadvertently. Is it better than the many detents of the Logitech wheel? After three days, I am not sure, but it is not bad, call it a draw.

The tilt action is the new bit, and it works as advertised. When you scroll left and right, it has a little "click" and moves the window as desired. It is easy to scroll on one axis without inadvertent movement on the other. In short, it works right. Kudos to Microsoft for this one, it will probably be as irreplaceable in a year or two as the scroll wheel is now. The annoyance of scrolling around on web pages that are too wide is now gone for good. This one has sold me.

The mouse has one dark side to an otherwise nearly perfect piece. It goes into power saver mode to conserve batteries, and when it comes back on, there was some jumping around. I would sometimes have to jiggle the mouse around a bit to wake it up, and by the time it came back to life, the cursor would jump around a bit. Nothing earth shattering, but it was the only thing I could find to criticize, and we reviewers must find SOMETHING to bitch about with every product.

The software is standard MS fare, and has good programmability and tweaking abilities. You can set the scroll speeds from way to slow to impossibly fast. Halfway was about right on both axes for me. The popup indicators for caps lock and volume were a mixed bag. The volume controls would boot me out of a Mame session, so I had to disable them, but the caps lock indicator would not. Curious, but again, not the end of the world. Otherwise, there were no problems to report.

Overall, this next advance in mouse wheel technology falls firmly into the good category. It adds a great deal to everyday computer use, and by the time I get used to it an a week or two, I will be missing it on machines that don't have a tilt wheel. If it wasn't for that damnable F-Lock thing, this combo would rate a solid 8, but with it, I am forced to drop this to a 7. Keyboards and mice like this take a bit of getting used to, and I will give this pair another week or 2 and report back. The burning questions that need to be answered are battery life, and whether or not the tilt wheel becomes second nature. Stay tuned. µ