Microsoft Announces Windows 8 Mice and Keyboards

In theory, a touchpad replacing the mousewheel sounded like a good idea. In practice, I absolutely hate the Magic Mouse, and I doubt being on Windows will be an improvement. The ability to do gestures on a mouse sounded like a good idea, but most of them just replace keyboard or mouse+keyboard commands that were just as fast, and you lose the speed and precision of a tactile scroll-wheel.
 
Fuck mobile computing, I'll stick to my full size DasKeyboard and mice with actual buttons and wheels thanks.
 
Mitrovarr said:
In theory, a touchpad replacing the mousewheel sounded like a good idea. In practice, I absolutely hate the Magic Mouse, and I doubt being on Windows will be an improvement. The ability to do gestures on a mouse sounded like a good idea, but most of them just replace keyboard or mouse+keyboard commands that were just as fast, and you lose the speed and precision of a tactile scroll-wheel.
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I have Touch Mouse that I use with Windows 8 and actually the experience is pretty good in the Release Preview. Some rough edges but one thing that works great I think is scrolling particularly in new stuff like Office 2013 and IE 10. And there's one mouse gesture called Instant View that's an Expose clone that's pretty neat, at least on the desktop. It's feature that actually was developed for Windows 7 and it's a great app switcher for desktop apps. Currently though it doesn't work with Metro apps but I'm assuming that will be fixed in Windows 8 RTM and the release version of the drivers. Three finger flick up and an Expose like view of all running apps, including Metro apps, that's actually very useful and efficient.
 
Fooshnik said:
Microsoft needs to quit trying to copy Apple. They're not very good at it.
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Microsoft has been making PC peripherals for nearly 30 years, there's no Apple copying with these deices. And while some aspects of Windows 8 do mimic Apple like the the App store, Apple have never produced a touch based OS X device, they have existed in the Windows would for years.
 
Supraman321 said:
Don't knock it till you tried it....

Looks can be deceiving....

Don't judge a book by its cover....

All of those sayings come to mind but man with something that odd looking it should have a picture or a short video of someone using it or something......
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I Agee with ya. I may go to the store and try the mouse n kb. If they feel as solid as the apple ones I'm down.
 
So Microsoft really is trying to rip off Apple and it's not the other way around?
Here comes the proprietary M$ hardware... just, wow.

And they wonder why game developers are pissed at them and calling Win8 a catastrophe. :rolleyes:

AppleSoft!
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+1
 
heatlesssun said:
So what are your specific criticisms of the Touch Mouse in Windows 8?
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Its quality was on par with an Apple Mighty Mouse, it sucked hardcore for anything, including general usage.
It's accuracy was terrible, and I can't imagine crappy hardware will fair much better in Win8.
 
So I'm 22 and apparently I'm an old fart, because nothing about that hardware comes even close to my use-cases.

Going off on the windows 8 digression for a second:
Windows really is arcane. Thinking about my desktop objectively, there's a huge amount of wasted space that does very little even aesthetically, yet I got up-in-arms when Microsoft announced a move to make that space more useable. Let me ask you guys something, seriously, when was the last time you used the start menu for something other than search? Sure, Sometimes I'd right click on computer to get to device management, but then I discovered that "compu" + the down arrow accomplished the same task without touching the mouse. There's a lot of room for improvement in windows as it is today, and I do at the very least think what Windows 8 tries to accomplish --in the desktop space-- is a good move.

Back on topic, nuts to those keyboards and nuts to those mice. I switched to Lenovo for the nub keyboard a while back and will only move back to a touchpad kicking and screaming. The novelty of touch wears off fairly quickly, and a mouse is any annoyingly (for MS at least) effective utilitarian design. It’s more practical as it allows more permutations of indication (different clicks + mouse wheel + thumb buttons), it doesn't suffer from finger-grease issues, and it allows you to control large screens with small gestures and a minimal reduction of precision. There's plenty to be improved on in keyboard and mouse design, but again, I think this is a swing and a miss.

Microsoft has too many masters. Their platform isn't readily extensible. Sure it’s possible to skin the ancient thing that is the windows desktop, but it’s always at the very least moderately broken --hell, the native windows shell hasn't been holding up too well for me. This move toward more mom-friendly user experiences I largely appreciate; who wouldn't prefer working with a nicely themed metro app to working with a cold nasty and largely CLI'd application? But in this move, toward touching your screen and gesture-ing on a touchpad I feel like I'm getting left out in the rain.

Despite my disapproval for a few of the windows 8 design changes, I think the forward looking nature of windows 8 and the move toward touch is something to be excited about. It’s likely to dig up some really useful and radical changes to the PC user experience…

...and then Microsoft goes and makes stunning stupid statements like "A really great file management experience", and I lose all hope.

SkribbelKat said:
Oh stop complaining and go get opposable thumbs like the rest of us! ;)
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I lol'd.

Fooshnik said:
Microsoft needs to quit trying to copy Apple. They're not very good at it.
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Actually, in a couple of fields, their masters of the apple-craft, but when it comes to windows, they do seem pretty clueless. Maybe that great file management experience will draw users in.
 
heatlesssun said:
Microsoft has been making PC peripherals for nearly 30 years, there's no Apple copying with these deices. And while some aspects of Windows 8 do mimic Apple like the the App store, Apple have never produced a touch based OS X device, they have existed in the Windows would for years.
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Some on this forum would say that Apple's smarter in this regards - iOS for touch and OSX for desktop. That there's no reason to put touchscreen operating systems on desktops. It's a desktop.

I like Windows 8 though, but there's a a lot of room for improvements. Hope they won't ignore testers as much in Windows 9 and improve on Windows 8's shortcomings.
 
Azhar said:
Some on this forum would say that Apple's smarter in this regards - iOS for touch and OSX for desktop. That there's no reason to put touchscreen operating systems on desktops. It's a desktop.

I like Windows 8 though, but there's a a lot of room for improvements. Hope they won't ignore testers as much in Windows 9 and improve on Windows 8's shortcomings.
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I don't think they are ignoring testers as much as people who don't like the hybrid nature of Windows 8. As with all things of course Windows 8 can be improved but the fact is that tablets and desktops are merging, it's inevitable. While Apple's approach is different Apple is more and more promoting the iPad as a desktop/laptop replacement and to some extent for some people an iPad can be a reasonably sufficient productivity device though of course not replacing all capabilities of a PC. I simply don't understand the logic of holding back PCs to mouse and keyboard only input when all of the growth in devices today aren't mouse and keyboard driven.
 
you get work done faster with a mouse and keyboard? Games work better on mouse keyboard? Touch is more casual/relaxed friendly. It's for the type of setting where you just want to hop on the couch and don't want extra peripherals to carry around with you.

I find programs like launchy.net to be the most productive. There is too much repetition in movements that can be reduced by a program like launchy and its pluggins.
 
Touch is more casual/relaxed friendly. It's for the type of setting where you just want to hop on the couch and don't want extra peripherals to carry around with you.
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This I can totally agree with.
 
Red Falcon said:
Its quality was on par with an Apple Mighty Mouse, it sucked hardcore for anything, including general usage.
It's accuracy was terrible, and I can't imagine crappy hardware will fair much better in Win8.
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Not sure why you would think that Windows 8, an OS that's been totally redone to support touch, wouldn't work significantly better with a touch device like the Touch Mouse than Windows 7. From my experience thus far the Touch Mouse does indeed work much better on 8 than 7.

Microsoft just released the production version of it's touch device drivers and I just installed them for the Touch Mouse and it's a very nice mouse to use with Windows 8. It doesn't look like all of the functionality is there even with the production drivers in the Release Preview, I've not seen any of the new gestures, but the accuracy is very good, vertical scrolling overall is very and smooth, horizontal scrolling is great with this thing. With the app switching gestures I think these mice will be very popular with Windows 8.
 
heatlesssun said:
Not sure why you would think that Windows 8, an OS that's been totally redone to support touch, wouldn't work significantly better with a touch device like the Touch Mouse than Windows 7. From my experience thus far the Touch Mouse does indeed work much better on 8 than 7.
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Software can only fix crappy hardware so much.
If the hardware sucks, no OS or drivers in the world are going to fix it.

Also, the wedge would be better used as a door stop.
Sorry heatlesssun, I know you like Microsoft, but their hardware has been crap for the last decade.
 
I would say that Microsoft's mice and keyboards and been well regarded over the years overall. As far as the Wedge mouse is concerned, yes it's an odd looking beast but I don't typically call things garbage that I've not used so I'll reserve judgment.

However, I have used the Touch Mouse with both Windows 7 and 8, and it works better in 8 from my experience, it works well in 8 overall. I've not yet see the app navigation gestures so again until I actually see the device in action with all of it's features with production drivers on Windows 8 RTM I'll reserve judgment.
 
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