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Comment by dfranke | Hacker News Reader

The heavy, cream-colored two-button serial mice were the best on the market at the time, and the Sidewinder Pro was a very nice joystick. The mice they sell today are simply ordinary, and no keyboard of theirs has ever held a candle to the old IBMs or the current DAS keyboards (among others).

On the other hand, Windows 7 is the first Microsoft OS since 3.11 that I can use for a full day without doing unhealthy things to my blood pressure.

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My all-time favorite pointing device was an optical trackball from Microsoft (I forget the model name). I haven't found one of those since the last I had one was stolen (yes, really) back in 2003ish.

The IBM Model M [1] (and certain imitators), the Das Keyboard [2], the HP Wireless Elite [3], and even the keyboards on Thinkpads [4] are among my all-time top-five favorite keyboards. The original run of Microsoft Natural keyboards [5] (back before they became bulbous "multimedia" train wrecks of UI design [6][7]) were a very distant fifth place, though.

1: http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=61

2: http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=1193

3: http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=865

4: http://media.laptoplogic.com/data/reviews/images/73/keyboard...

5: http://images.tigerdirect.com/skuimages/large/M17-1806-main....

6: http://www.pctechguide.com/images/51NaturalKeyboard.jpg

7: http://tinyurl.com/na5pos

You mean one of these? Yeah, Microsoft could make some good money bringing these back. I know I'd worry less about mine biting the dust.

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-SEALED-RETAIL-PACKAGE-Microsoft-Opti...

http://cgi.ebay.com/SEALED-BULK-RETAIL-PACKAGE-Microsoft-Opt...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-TrackBall-Optical-Mouse-PS-2-U...

Yes! That's the one.

. . . and no, I'm not willing to buy a trackball off eBay. Maybe I should start searching for old stock of these things again, though.

I don't have a photo, but there was a version of the natural keyboard earlier on that didn't screw up the block of keys above the arrows. I had one of those, saw the new ones, and thought to myself: "They're embracing and extending the keyboard now, nothing is sacred."

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