[grogi]

Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000
"It goes without saying - Microsoft holds a large portion of the peripheral market. We have used their keyboards, mice, trackballs, joysticks, game pads, and who knows what else over the years. Microsoft (for the most part) has always made quality products for a variety of users, so peripherals were a small, but respectable business for them.

Well before the release of Vista last January, Microsoft teased us with a few photos of a very promising mouse and keyboard setup. The Desktop 8000 was supposed to be released along side Vista and take advantage of many of the operating-specific features that were to be introduced, and many innovative features for the keyboard that hadn't been used before on the desktop.

Going forward a few months, they failed to deliver the 8000 at Vista's release, and many months thereafter. But recently, Microsoft sent us a sample to test out.

Right off the bat, I need to say this keyboard and mouse package challenges what functions traditional products are capable of. In hindsight, getting to use a piece of plastic with more that a QWERTY keyboard next to two buttons and a scroll-wheel can really change your expectations of what it means to use a keyboard, which can be a good thing if it packs more than a few media buttons and an unusable software package. I'll get to that later."