I really hope to meet someone who took part in design the latest incarnation of Microsoft keyboards and give them a piece of my mind at the next MVP summit. I have the Wireless Optical Desktop Pro which is absolutely hands down the best keyboard and mouse money can buy. The sex appeal on these two input devices is unmatched by any other keyboard or mouse.

For years I was anxiously awaiting the day I could pick up a desktop set that was wireless, had a natural keyboard, and most importantly had style by being black. Heck they even did one better by having clear keys, save the F keys and the multimedia keys, that’s my only gripe about the keyboards looks. The mouse is just gorgeous, the fluid scroll wheel (name © Jonathan Kay) feels amazing. Overall the ergonomics of both devices is remarkable.

But all is not well in the land of Microsoft Keyboard products. All of the new generation keyboards (not including the Natural Elite or Internet keyboard) have these extra functions for all the function keys. Like F4 is new, F5 is open, and F6 is close, etc. In order to make these work while still maintaining the original function of the function keys they created the F-Lock key. That’s fine and dandy but they made a serious flaw in the way it works. Every time your system reboots the F-Lock key loses its state, it’s sort of like the Number Lock key except the BIOS allows you to take care of that one. In any case this little F-Lock key and the extra uses for the function keys create a problem when booting to machines that boot really quickly.

I’ve got a Dell Dimension 4600C Media Center Edition here that boots up extremely fast. Right now it’s plugged into a LCD but if I plug in a CRT the system will get past the POST screener so quickly the CRT hasn’t even warmed up and displayed a picture yet. I timed the entire boot up process on a clean install and it’s pretty spiffy. The at 2.47 we’re past the POST screen, 18.36 and we’re at the Welcome screen, 26.65 and we’ve got a fully loaded Desktop. I’ve only been using this keyboard for a week so when I tried booting to the systems boot menu with F12 it took a minute for me to remember the F-Lock key. Once I remembered it took 5 tries before I could turn on the F-Lock key and hit F12 to actually pull the Boot Menu up. You have to have pretty quick reflexes to hit both keys and get it to work in under 2.5 seconds.

So this is where the problem arises. Since the F-Lock key gets reset after every reboot you have to turn it back on every time the system boots. There is no reason for the extra functions of the function keys to work outside of Windows so why bother messing up things until then? Surely it would’ve been more intelligent to let the function keys maintain their original purpose and instead of the current set up reverse things so that with the F-Lock on the extra functions would be turned on. If it was done this way, then Windows/IntelliType could’ve turned on the F-Lock and users would be able to change a setting in Windows whether they wanted it on or off by default. Now I won’t be surprised if they had some reason for doing things the way they did but it could’ve been much much more thought out.

While I’m talking about the lock keys, another minor annoyance is the fact that the status lights for these keys aren’t located on the keyboard with the Wireless line of keyboards. My guess is that they did it for power saving purposes or something. But the problem here is that like many people I got the Wireless package to keep my desk just a tad cleaner so I’ve hidden the transmitter down and behind my monitor. If I want to see the status of the of the Caps, Number, or F lock I can’t just glance down at the keyboard, I have to look at the transmitter which is slightly hidden or I have to use IntelliType. I guess this isn’t that big of a deal but something that takes getting used to. Of course one would normally realize the status of the locks when they started typing in CAPS or moving left and right instead of typing 46.

I wonder if some sort of update could possibly fix the way the F-Lock key functions…

Tags: Ideas, Microsoft, Rants