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When
looking for a keyboard and mouse set there is a lot of
choice out there, not to mention the very wide range in
price and quality. These can vary from your cheap £15 wired
sets all the way up to £100+ Bluetooth keyboard and mouse
kits. Microsoft, however you may feel about there software
side of the company, are one of the leaders in producing
keyboards and mice.
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The
Microsoft’s Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth is no
exception; the quality of the product is next to none. The
ergonomics of the keyboard are very well thought out, it’s
small and robust, perfect for moving around. It comes with a
detachable wrist support for use when at the desk which can
be removed easily when moving the board around. As I
normally sit with it on my knee, the wrist rest is not
needed. |
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Buy from Amazon.co.uk! |
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The
mouse that comes with the set is the same as the original
Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer, but its blue and built for
Bluetooth. The mouse itself has not changed, its still of
very high quality, fitting perfectly into your hand with the
extra buttons in the perfect place. This mouse though has
one obvious major advantage, its Bluetooth compatibility;
this means that it has a response range of up to 10m,
through walls! This goes for the keyboard as well. Granted
most of the time this range is fairly pointless as if you
cannot see what you are doing on the screen there isn’t much
point doing it. I personally find the awesome range of
Bluetooth very useful for volume control, as I use my
machine as a music centre a lot of the time, the keyboard is
great as it has a greater range than most remote controls.
This means the volume can be changed where ever you are in
the house. |
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The
installation of the Desktop set wasn’t the most straight
forward of procedure, and was quite time consuming and
tedious. After first installing the Bluetooth receiver and
restarting your computer, you then have to install the
keyboard and restart, then the mouse. In addition you cannot
have another mice plugged in otherwise there is a conflict
and you need to restart again without having an additional
mouse plugged in. It also took a few attempts for the mouse
to register, but once you’ve gone through the whole
rigmarole of setting everything up, the set actually
performs very well.
As said, the performance of both the keyboard and mouse is
very good. There is no noticeable lag in the response, even
when playing fast first person shooters like Unreal
Tournament. As would be expected of wireless equipment, they
switch themselves off when not used for long periods of
time. This particular kit cuts off quite regularly, which is
both a blessing and a course, if put into stupid extremes.
It only becomes annoying if your using the mouse a lot but
infrequently, as every time it cuts out you need to wait a
few seconds for it to reconnect, but this is no different to
other products on the market, and not really something that
can be amended. The good side of this is that it prolongs
the battery life.
Battery life is where Microsoft fall down compared to a lot
of other wireless manufacturers out there, as most build in
a recharging facility for their mice in particular. This is
the only major fault I can find with the Microsoft kits, if
they only would produce a docking station for their mouse
for recharging it wouldn’t be far from perfect!
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Functionality wise both keyboard and mouse are fully
programmable; every button on the mouse can be
programmed from a big list of different functions. This
is where I have the biggest bone to pick, mainly with
the newest version of the Microsoft mouse software. The
number of functions that you were able to programme the
mouse to use has been seriously reduced. With the
original software you could program one of the buttons
to open the start menu, and Microsoft for some reason
have taken this command off, along with many others. For
most people this isn’t really a problem, but when you’ve
been using the function on your old mouse for over a
year, and then you upgrade and find that this is no
longer available, it is very frustrating!
The Keyboard itself can have all its hot buttons
programmed to open which ever programs you wish them to
open. In addition the keyboard has the F-Lock button to
change the F-Keys to different, mainly office based
functions like open, close, save etc. Because of its
slim and compact design the board doesn’t come equipped
with all the bells and whistles the Optical Desktop
Executive Edition does, but I think that with the
keyboard being transported about a lot this was a good
sacrifice to make to keep the size down.
Overall the Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth is an
excellent kit if you are looking for a durable, reliable
and very well built and performing keyboard and mouse.
Enhanced by Bluetooth technology, if you can afford 70
odd quid, then this is defiantly the kit to go for. With
only a few drawbacks (one of them being my personal
vendetta) this set is well worth the money! It is also
one of the cheaper Bluetooth kits on the market!
One final note, with having a Bluetooth keyboard, you
will need to keep your old none Bluetooth keyboard
floating about if you ever want to enter you motherboard
bios. As this Bluetooth is only supported in windows.
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Quality: |
10/10 |
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Exceptional quality from Microsoft here, both keyboard
and mouse are weightier than most, and you can really
feel the quality. |
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Price : |
9/10 |
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It’s a pricy set, but then
again it’s cheaper than a lot of other Bluetooth sets
around, excellent value for money here. |
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Installation
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7/10 |
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Long
winded, a little tricky and can get annoying, however
it’s not hard to understand and the wizard and
instructions are clear and helpful. |
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Compatibility : |
10/10 |
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The
set will work with any Windows PC with a USB port, which
these days are almost every computer. |
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Performance : |
9/10 |
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With
not having a charger the performance is not 100%, 100%
of the time, but in my view this is only a minor
drawback when you think about its superior feel and
performance of the product. |
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Overall :
45/50
Microsoft have
cooked up a beauty here, an excellent set which
I would recommend anyone to invest in. |
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