No more wires! But there's a price to pay for convenience

Perhaps your keyboard and/or mouse broke, you're looking for a new one, and you figured you'd go wireless to reduce some wire clutter on your desk. Or maybe you have, like I do, your computer hooked up to your TV, and you want a way to control your computer from your couch. This Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 4000 seems like a good choice for either, but how does it work in reality?

Keyboard
The keyboard is actually Microsoft's Wireless Comfort Keyboard 4000. It has a minimally curved layout which promises to be more ergonomic than a regular keyboard, but it's not as extreme as their wired comfort curve keyboard. I found that it puts my wrists into a more natural position, but it doesn't really feel any better than a regular keyboard. It hasn't been hard to adjust to, so I'm neutral on the shape.

The keys have a slightly mushy feel which I disliked when I first started, but I've grown accustomed to it. The home-insert-end keys are in a different layout than on most normal keyboards; I keep hitting the delete key when I mean to hit the end key, and the end key when I mean to hit page up. This was probably done to reduce the width of the keyboard (instead of 3 keys across and 2 keys down, it's 2 across and 3 down), but it's somewhat annoying.

The keyboard has many extra buttons to control media players and launch applications. It has the normal volume control and play/stop/next previous keys, but also has 5 configurable buttons at the top, 5 buttons on the left side, and 3 on the upper right. I find the media control keys useful, and some of the configurable buttons, but truthfully, I would have preferred the buttons on the left side of the keyboard removed so the keyboard was smaller; I don't need 13 buttons to launch apps.

The function keys (F1-F12) are also mapped to common application buttons by default (such as undo/redo, open/close, save, print, etc.) and to actually use them as function keys, you need to enable the f-lock.

There is a zoom slider on the keyboard, which is useful for, well, zooming into things, but I rarely use the function in the first place, and it can't be used for anything besides zooming.

Microsoft includes software to allow the extra buttons to work that you will need to install. It was not too difficult to install, and it hasn't done anything bad to my computer.

The keyboard is pretty sturdy; if I try to twist the keyboard, it flexes very very little.

The keyboard takes 2 AA batteries; after a month of use, it's still at "good". I expect them to last 4-6 months.

Mouse
The mouse uses laser technology, which is supposed to be better than optical somehow. For what I mostly do, which is surfing the internet and writing, I don't really notice the difference. In addition to the normal right and left buttons, the mouse has two small additional buttons above the right and left mouse buttons. These are configurable for a wide range of actions, but I just use it to navigate forward and backwards. The buttons are hard to reach so I don't use them that often.

The main left and right buttons are responsive, but somewhat mushy. The mouse wheel also feels a bit mushy; the detents when scrolling are barely perceptible, unlike my old mouse.

The scroll has, aside from vertical scrolling and middle click, the ability to detect if you're pushing it to the right or left, which is used to scroll horizontally. This is a handy feature to have, if you have a small monitor where you have to do a lot of horizontal scrolling.

The included Microsoft application allows for the custom assignment of functions to each button.

The mouse takes 2 AA batteries; I've used it for a month and my battery level still reads "good".

Wireless
So how well does the wireless work? It hasn't yet made me think about it, so it's working pretty well. I have no problem using the mouse or keyboard from my couch, which is about a 4-5 ft distance. My cell phone does not seem to affect the range at all. There is no perceivable lag, but I'm not a gamer so I can't say if it would be good for games.

The Microsoft software has both wireless signal quality and battery life indicators for both the mouse and keyboard. The wireless signal quality is somewhat arbitrary, as for a while it said my keyboard, when 6 inches away from the receiver, had low signal quality, but I could type just fine.

There is one wireless receiver for both the mouse and keyboard; the receiver is about the size of a hockey puck, so it's probably too big for traveling with. I have it sitting in the empty space below my monitor, so it doesn't take up any of my desk space. Still, I wonder if it really needs to be as big as it is.

Summary
Basically this is a nice wireless keyboard and mouse combo. The feedback of the buttons is a little mushy, but the build quality and range are good. I probably wouldn't pay the retail price for it, but if you can find it on sale for less than $40, it's a good deal.