Microsoft Keyboard & Mouse Set with image zoom 

Grey and Black this Wireless Optical Desktop Comfort Edition has a built in padded RSI strip and is indeed comfortable, but that is not the extra. It is 48x24x4cm and those measurement are all maximum. This is about 3cm longer than a standard keyboard.

There are a total of 21 extra buttons not found on a standard keyboard plus a sprung slider on the left side – yes that’s the extra feature – and I will tell you about it shortly.

As with most of Microsoft’s recent keyboards the Function keys can be locked to give extra shortcuts. I can see these may be useful and should you use this type of keyboard all the time it could save serious time.

Various other buttons – five to the left of the slider – and three more above the numeric keypad do useful things as well as the 16 along the top above the function keys and five of these can be programmed by you.

The keyboard shape is slightly curved out meaning that TY,GH,BN keys are slightly larger and that the keys between the alpha and numeric keys are arranged differently. I found after a few hours use that almost everything felt correct. I do tend to use the shift key to type some words in capitals and found that if the timing is slightly off then it helpfully types the rest of the word lowercase, helpful it thinks, but not what I required. Once I was aware of this quirk I was ready for it.

The mouse is a cordless optical rodent and works best on a non reflective surface, two button with four way wheel in between so you can scroll not only up and down but left and right, very good for those extremely large spreadsheets.

The keyboard and mouse are both USB and PS/2 and this is something you must begin to take account of as PC manufacturers would like to get rid of all legacy ports so PS/2 could go, already lots of notebooks do not have serial ports.

So – you have been very patient – what is the extra slider, it is a device for zooming in and out of images, it works well but after many years of doing this other ways it is certainly not automatic yet – for me at least - to use it.

It is stated to work on Macs as well as PC so I assume the provided CD has the required files on it as well as the PC versions of IntelliType Pro 5.1 & IntelliPoint 5.1.

The keyboard works well –apart from the occasional problem with capitals in words, the shape seems fine and my wrists appreciate the padded rest. No complaints about the mouse either, both have two AA batteries with a stated life of 6 months. The one controller worked immediately and unlike some other cordless sets needed no further adjustments it sits on top of a tower system about 60 cm away from the keyboard and maybe a metre away from the mouse. The stated price is £79.99 but numerous people discount Microsoft products so you should be able to get it for less.

Link http://www.microsoft.com/uk/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=030