microsoft peripherals

Why does MS introduce peripherals that are well-designed, and then make them less so? Their Natural keyboards used to have normal inverted-T style arrow keys. Now they have some sort of insane cross configuration. There, they took the standard and ditched it for something dumb. I guess that’s par for the course.

Their Intellimouse Optical was a seven-button mouse: left, right, wheel (is three buttons), back and forward. Back and forward were on the left and right sides of the mouse, and you could click them with your thumb and ring finger. All their new mice put both the back and forward buttons on the left. It’s not as natural a mapping, since the UI always shows back and forward as left and right movements.

Written on April 7, 2005