After a brief, tricky change over, Microsoft’s clever Touch Mouse is growing on me. However, it has an annoying design flaw: The mouse needs its own USB wireless dongle in addition to the one already installed on my PC for the Wireless Comfort Keyboard.
Previously the keyboard shared a single dongle with its paired mouse.
It’s not as if there’s a shortage of unused USB ports. That’s not the point, it smacks of lazy engineering, which doesn’t inspire confidence in the Microsoft hardware brand.
I wish somebody would invent Bluetooth, then we wouldn’t need separate wireless transceivers for each device.
There were earlier Microsoft Bluetooth mice and keyboards. I wonder why MS stopped going down that path.
I believe that the licensing fees for the Bluetooth stack are prohibitive and that the added cost passed on doesn’t sit well with consumers who demand cheap rodents…
Shame – I have an early MS Bluetooth mouse that I ‘upgraded’ as it had no off switch leading to extreme battery drain. After the installation of the switch it has been perfect on my old windows machine. After brief hatred I now love the new Apple mouse which complements the trackpad.
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