Interesting Microsoft's wireless mouse project: line of sight or what?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hillbilly
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Hillbilly

I've never used wireless mice or keyboards before and need to learn how
reliable they are when used in "proximity" to a small form factor PC that
will be mounted "behind" a HDTV mounted to a wall. I'm planning to put the
keyboard and mouse in a box mounted to the wall just below the HDTV hung on
the wall inches above. When the lid of the box is opened it will swing down
like a tray holding the keyboard and mouse but I don't know if this will be
allow the keyboard and mouse to operate?

How would Microsoft's wireless keyboard and mice work then? I'll continue to
do some looking around but any help to determine how these things actually
work so I can know the range and limits will be very helpful to me thank
you...
 
These devices use radio frequency communications, not infrared; so they
don't need to have direct line of sight. They are highly range-limited
though so your plan may or may not work.
 
Microsoft's wireless keyboard runs on batteries? How long might they last
would you know?
 
Hi, Hillbilly.

There are several different wireless desktops (keyboard and mouse), and they
use more than one wireless technology.

I'm far from an expert on these things, but I've used several wireless sets,
from both Logitech and Microsoft. The first ones I used were not truly
"wireless". They had a cable about 6' long running to a fist-sized
transceiver that sitting on a bookshelf a few feet to the side of my
monitor, well above my computer case on the floor. These needed to be near
line-of-sight, but were not terribly picky about that. Another set used a
Bluetooth dongle; this did not require line-of-sight; I didn't use this set
very long, partly because of problems with getting and keeping the sender
and receivers "paired".

My current set is version 3.0 of the Microsoft Wireless Desktop Laser 6000,
which uses 2.4 GHz wireless. As Richard said, this does not require
line-of-sight, and distance has not been a problem in my small office.

Battery life also has not been a major concern, although they do have to be
replaced now and then. I've not tried to record the frequency, but it has
not been bothersome in my case.

There are a couple of non-obvious problems that bothered me but night not
concern you. First, I gave away that Bluetooth set because I could not
dual-boot with it. Bluetooth would not work until Windows was started and
loaded the BT drivers. This meant that I could not choose among WinXP and
various Vista beta builds because the keyboard wasn't working at the point
when the choice needed to be made, so I was locked into the default OS each
time. Other desktop sets had similar problems depending on WHICH USB port
the dongle was plugged into. If I plugged it into the port on the
motherboard, it worked, but if I plugged it into a 4-port hub which was
plugged into an add-on USB PCI card, it had problems similar to the
Bluetooth dilemma. Now that I've got the hub plugged onto the mobo port,
that problem has been eliminated.

The other problem was keyboard narcolepsy, or "sleeping sickness". When the
2.4 GHz transceiver is plugged into a USB port on the back of the computer
case, there seemed to be some kind of interference because the keyboard
would simply stop responding, often right in the middle of a word! No
keystroke would register for almost 2 minutes. Then it would wake up and
continue normally for some random length of time before going to sleep
again. I could solve this problem by moving the transceiver to the hub, a
foot or two closer to the keyboard on my desk - but then I had the "can't
dual-boot" problem again - until I changed the USB port for the hub itself.

Everything is fine now, but maybe my long narrative will give you some hints
of points to check out before you choose which desktop set to get - and
where to position the components. I DO like this Laser 6000 set, version
3.0. (The mouse still says v. 2.0.)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64
 
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