New Keyboard & Mouse

I’ve been forced to get a new key­board. We have two Microsoft Nat­ur­al Key­board Pros, but one suf­fered a bev­er­age spill at some point in the past and sev­er­al of the num­bers on the key­pad are too sticky to use. The oth­er has start­ed ran­dom­ly fail­ing to acknowl­edge the exis­tence of most of the keys on its left-hand side. So, okay, new keyboard.

I like this kind of key­board. I’ve got­ten used to them. Of course, that means Microsoft decid­ed to stop mak­ing them. They make oth­er key­boards that are sor­ta like them, but not exact­ly. For one thing, none of the new­er ones have the two USB ports, and I like to use those to plug in my mouse and PDA cradle.

Sam talked me into try­ing the wire­less key­board and opti­cal mouse “suite” MS is sell­ing these days. After I got things hooked up, they aren’t so bad. I still miss key­boards that click. This feels a wee bit mushy, but we did­n’t find any that click, so okay, I guess I must deal with it. And the lack of wires is nice—though find­ing a place to put the trans­mit­ter that’s at least 6″ away from “any source of inter­fer­ence” (com­put­er cas­es, mon­i­tors, and speak­ers were all list­ed) and the mouse and key­board them­selves was fun.

I’ve found one prob­lem, though. I’m clum­sy. I’ve already knocked the mouse off the desk twice, and there’s no wire to keep it from roam­ing far­ther away than I can eas­i­ly reach from the chair.

Edit: Okay, it’s not me being clum­sy. The desk is tilt­ed just a lit­tle towards my chair, and every time I get up the key­board tray falls back toward my chair, send­ing the mouse fly­ing off the desk. So I don’t feel quite so klutzy now — but I’ve still got a mouse that keeps wan­der­ing away.