The mouse features the traditional 4-Way scrolling tilt wheel design that most of the latest mice have, as well as the patented ergonomic design that almost every Microsoft mouse has. Sadly the wheel has no tactile feedback at all, so rotating the wheel results in a ’smooth’ somewhat lifeless feel to it. I find that this is a huge negative point as many people find the clicky tactile wheel to be the most suitable for day to day work.
The mouse is powered by 2xAA batteries and the quoted battery life is approximately 6 months, which sounds about right when put alongside the competition. You would think that the batteries would weigh an already large mouse down, but it’s not really bad. The mouse is perfectly usable for application and general browsing use. How useful this is for gaming remains to be scene though, and I can’t see it being a decent performer at all.
Lastly just to complete its poor features, the mouse is a measly 1000 dpi. Not impressive when you consider that Logitech’s far superior mice (including my MX518) are around the 2000 dpi region. As a result, it just ‘felt’ wrong in use compared to my Logitech MX518. It wasn’t only less accurate, but I found it very hard to adapt to over a ‘quick’ 3hr usage session.
IntelliType/IntelliPoint
I had a few issues installing the software for this duo on Windows Vista. Just for your information, IntelliType is required for Microsoft’s keyboard range, while IntelliPoint is required for its mice. With this in mind, the Microsoft website saw fit to repeatedly link me to the IntelliPoint setup file even though I specified that I required drivers for a ‘keyboard’. This led me to believe that Vista IntelliType drivers didn’t exist. At this early stage in Vista’s life where obtaining driver support for peripherals is a major pain in the you know what, I was left rather fuming. I eventually found them though after much rummaging around, and they installed flawlessly.
Imagine my surprise when I saw how simplistic and yet how functional it was without any daft, bloated graphical interfaces - just a simple series of clear dialogue boxes that do the job. Take note Logitech, this is just one of the areas where your poor drivers completely fall short. Microsoft’s IntelliPoint mice drivers weigh in at 6.5mb, whilst Logitech’s bloated SetPoint is a huge 50mb. Both sets of drivers support multiple mice too, but the size difference between the two is hard to ignore. One could argue that SetPoint now includes both mice and keyboard drivers into a single package therefore increasing its size but having said that IntelliType is just 7mb alone and supports multiple keyboards too.
I should state that if you should choose not to install IntelliType, then some of the customisable keys will still function fine. I found that Outlook 2007 would launch when I hit the Email button. In addition to this Firefox would launch upon hitting the Home key, and the mute/volume buttons as well as the media buttons worked without any problems. However, you obviously cannot customise the hotkeys. IntelliType does provide one rather neat feature I really like - a small graphical indicator which pops up everytime you use the volume keys. In addition to this, you also get visual notifications should you depress the caps/scroll/num lock keys, which makes up for the fact that the keyboard has no LED lights for these keys.
IntelliPoint allows mouse functionality and custom button assignments. It is hardly any different from the way Logitech’s Setpoint operates, but seeing as I wasn’t going to use the included mouse, they were quickly uninstalled. Both IntelliType/Point also have battery and signal strength indicators on their software control panels, which is a nice addition.
The USB Receiver unit
I almost left out this little dongle! It plugs straight into a USB port and operates at a 27MHz RF frequency. I am not sure operating at such a frequency is a good idea either because it is widely used on mobile phones and remotes as it is. Suffice to say it’s a popular operating frequency for wireless devices, and how this possibly interferes with the unit in future remains to be seen.
Lastly as I have already mentioned, I am not sure why Microsoft decided to add the Caps/Num/Scroll lock indicator lights onto the receiver unit. There is enough space on the keyboard so what was the problem?
