Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/accessories/0,39100116,49298126,00.htm

Reviewed 10 July 2008

Reviewed by Michelle Thatcher

The Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 is a mainstream solution. It's likely not going to solve the unique problems of clinically injured computer users, but it does seem like a decent entry point for the average user who wants a slightly more body-friendly desktop setup than a standard keyboard and mouse. It's priced accordingly at £60 -- pricey for a desktop set, but really at the entry level for ergonomic solutions.

Design
The design of the keyboard in the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 is essentially the same as the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, though the former connects to your computer wirelessly via a USB receiver. The split design rises in the middle to keep your wrists and arms in a naturally rotated position. An optional riser snaps under the front of the keyboard to create a backward slant that prevents you from flexing your wrists.

You can further adjust the keyboard's height and angle via snap-up feet on the rear corners. The keyboard's wrist rest is padded with a faux-leather cover that's preferable to bare plastic but nevertheless not as comfortable as the gel wrist rests you can get elsewhere.

The elevated mouse looks more like a piece of fruit than a computer accessory and its buttons, wheel and palm rest all veer towards the right side. The idea behind the design is that it turns your wrist upward -- almost, though not quite, like a handshake -- and lets you rest your hand on the right side instead of putting pressure on the carpal tunnel area. The thumb rest and sides of the mouse are made of a rubberised material that lets users avoid the mouse death grip that so often accompanies extended computer work.

Features
The keyboard also incorporates a number of features designed to cut down on mousing. A row of silver buttons at the top of the board comes preprogrammed to do things such as launch your default Web browser or email client, control media playback and open the desktop calculator. Five additional numbered buttons can be programmed via the included IntelliType Pro software to launch any software or open a file of your choice.

In case you forget what you've assigned to each button, the My Favourites button in the middle of the board calls up a window that shows you. In the area between the split keys resides a two-way toggle that lets you zoom in and out of the active page. Below the spacebar and between the wrist pads are two buttons -- back and forward -- that allow you to move between Web pages without having to reach for your mouse.

Performance
All these features add up to a rather comfortable typing experience. We used the Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 with our primary computer for several weeks and we're mostly pleased with the level of comfort it offers. After just a few days with the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard we came to prefer it to traditional keyboards for all our typing. However, we were frustrated by the stiffness of the keys, especially the space bar.

Even after prolonged use we felt we had to press just too hard to type -- not exactly ideal for a keyboard that's supposed to reduce repetitive stress injuries and certainly a deal breaker for anyone whose hand and wrist pain starts in their fingers.

In fact, though wrist pain forced us to start mousing with our left hand years ago, we found ourselves eschewing our own Logitech MX610 left-handed mouse in favour of the right-handed Microsoft Natural Ergonomic mouse. We'd still prefer to have a left-handed version, which Microsoft sadly lacks.

As with the keyboard, our primary complaint relates to resistance. In this case, the rubberised scroll wheel offers more drag than we'd prefer. Also, though the mouse does incorporate thumb buttons, their poor placement between the thumb and forefinger meant that we hardly used them -- they were just too difficult to reach without moving our entire hand.

Conclusion
Our only gripes come from resistance: the keys feel slightly too stiff and the mouse scroll button requires slightly too much force. These weren't enough to outweigh the other comfort benefits of the set's design for our moderately achy wrists, but they could very well be deal-breakers for those with more serious injuries.

Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday