Product Reviews

Microsoft's Wireless Optical Desktop for Bluetooth is a keyboard and mouse system which utilises the new Bluetooth peripheral support in Mac OS X 10.2.5.

It is provided with a Bluetooth dongle which can be connected to a USB port or plugged into a desktop stand, but if you have to plug a receiver into your Mac, there's no advantage over any other wireless setup. If you have Bluetooth built-in, you simply have to have your Mac within about 10m of the keyboard and mouse to use them.

Playing to type

To get your Mac to recognise the devices, you simply run Bluetooth Setup Assistant in your Utilities folder, which now includes options for keyboards and mice. We found the ability to open our PowerBook on the desk and immediately start typing on a full-sized, extended keyboard very convenient. Likewise, most PowerBook and iBook users will

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agree that a mouse is generally preferable to the built-in trackpad.

The problem with the Microsoft Bluetooth Desktop is that it's not officially a Mac product. While other Microsoft mouse and keyboard products come with Mac drivers, the IntelliType and IntelliPoint software don't recognise the Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. This isn't too much of a problem for the mouse, as OS X automatically recognises right clicks and scroll wheels, although there are two additional buttons on the mouse which can't be used.

It's a bigger problem for the keyboard. First, there's a large bank of media buttons along the top of the keyboard that can't be used. But more importantly, there is no Command (Apple) key. There is a Windows Start key, which the Mac recognises as a Command key, but it and the Alt key are swapped around compared with a standard Mac keyboard. Fortunately help is at hand from a freeware utility called uControl (from gnufoo.org/ucontrol/) which lets you swap the functions of your keyboard's modifier keys. Handily, uControl can be set to work for a specific keyboard, so it doesn't swap the keys on your PowerBook.

Microsoft told us that it's aware of the lack of Mac support for the Bluetooth Desktop and is working on a solution, though no indication was given of how long it would take. Still, this is an impressive use of Bluetooth and a good, but imperfect, solution to a common problem faced by PowerBook users.