Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth

by Microsoft

Product Details

Product Manual [113kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006Y0CW
• Item model number: M54-00004
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 30, 2003

Product Description

Microsoft® Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth™ is the worlds first commercially available desktop solution that delivers Breakthrough Bluetooth Technology in a stylish, comfortable design. Simply put, its our most advanced wireless desktop ever. And because Bluetooth sets the standard bar for the emerging wireless world, your mouse and keyboard will work seamlessly easily with other Bluetooth – enabled compatible devices. What's more, it runs on the powerful and reliable Windows® XP platform, giving all your devices access to the wealth of information on your PC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty, but little else, September 14, 2003

By 

E. Johnson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth (Personal Computers)

1. It is NOT bluetooth compatible. It will stop functioning if there are other bluetooth transceivers around that are not the included Microsoft one.
2. The transceiver does not function with Bluetooth PDAs or phones, it only supports a small percentage of bluetooth products.
3. The keyboard and mouse will ONLY work with the included Microsoft transceiver (there -are- rare exceptions).
4. The included "convenient" adapter for laptops causes the Bluetooth dongle to poke +4" out of the USB port.
5. Many people are having their keyboard stop working suddenly after days, weeks, or occasionally months. There are workarounds, but they only sometimes work.
6. The keyboard and mouse are slow to respond.
7. There is no off switch on the mouse, so if you transport it remove the batteries.
8. The battery life is atrocious.
9. Sometimes a key on the keyboard becomes stuck down (not physically) and the letter pours across your screen. The only fix is to click elsewhere until it passes. Sometimes it is particularly ugly, such as when backspace is what is stuck.
10. The aforementioned has now occurred twice since beginning this review.
11. It is a very nice-looking setup.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful yet completely flawed, August 1, 2003

By 

"anuba" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth (Personal Computers)

I put my heart before my head on this one. It's the nicest looking mouse and keyboard you can put on your desk, plus it's got a bluetooth transceiver, what more could you want?

How about a product that works? For whatever reason the mouse and keyboard go to sleep after only 2 or 3 minutes of inactivity which would be fine if they didn't take literally 2 or 3 seconds to wake up. It is very annoying and causes problems when trying to use a (sleeping) keyboard modifier on a non-sleeping mouse.

Then the mouse eats batteries.

The bluetooth transceiver they include basically doesn't work with anything else. Certainly not any of the Pocket PC's out there.

No indicator lights on the keyboard at all - no caps, no num lock, no cool glow. There's no reason to put 2 AA batteries in a keyboard, make it 4 or 8 and give me some indicator lights. They're just little LED's.

Mouse feel is so-so and always seems to be just a little off.

Your BIOS can't see it so if you need to change settings there or if you need to change startup options for XP you need to have a wired keyboard handy.

Setup is a big pain too but you only have to do it once.

Maybe I'll buy version 2 of this but all I can recommend is to stay away from this and get Microsoft's regular wireless desktop which is a very nice product (even if the range is short).

Microsoft should be embarassed.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Owned this since Dec 2003 and haven't had issues, March 3, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth (Personal Computers)

I've had this product for almost 3 full months and decided I was going to buy another one for home, until I came to the Amazon reviews. I was surprised to see how many people have issues with this keyboard and mouse!

Things I recognize in my set:
1. The mouse does eat batteries, but I work anywhere from 8-12 hours a day, 5 days a week on this set and mouse batteries last 2 weeks usually, and the keyboard batteries last at least a month. I'm using regular copper top brand name batteries. It's all standard office work so it's not like I'm gaming with the mouse or anything, but they do last at least 2 full weeks.

2. It does hibernate if you don't use it for a few min but I find that moving the mouse to the right and left ONCE, or pressing ONE key will wake it up and have it going in less than 2 seconds. That's responsive enough for me.

Things that have never happened (yet..?)
-no keyboard "stickiness" with repeating letters
-no loss of recognition of the devices, they have been very reliable for me

I don't have any other BT periphs so I can't attest to issues with that. I am running XP SP1 and once I did the BT hotfix upon install everything has been great.
I would recommend this to anyone that wants more security and range than RF but doesn't have any other BT devices.