Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 5000

The $40 Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 5000 (WOM 5000) is comfortable to use (for the right-handed, anyway) and offers a simple but useful assortment of features and niceties. Sure, there are less expensive options out there, but we like the WOM 5000 enough to recommend it to anyone who wants a straightforward, reliable mouse for basic home or office productivity.

Almost identical in design to the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer with Fingerprint Reader--just without the fingerprint reader--the WOM 5000 has a cool two-tone, gray color scheme. A right-handed reviewer found it fairly ergonomic and comfortable. The soft plastic sides provide a smooth and comfortable resting place for the thumb and the last two fingers. The two thumb buttons are well placed--comfortable to click, but not so convenient that you'll hit them by accident. The rubber four-way scrollwheel is easy to grip and move, and we dig the horizontal scrolling capability; however, the scrollwheel doesn't click or provide feedback in any way when you roll it; we sort of missed the tactile response.

Setup on our Windows PC was simple. First, we popped in the two included AA batteries; Microsoft claims they'll last for six months, but we did not test this claim. Microsoft recommends installing the software before connecting the mouse, so we did. It took a minute or so, and even though the PC threatened that we'd need to restart, we didn't, and it didn't seem to matter. When we plugged the mouse-shaped receiver into a USB port (a PS/2 adapter is also included), Windows recognized its kindred hardware immediately, and we commenced mousing. Setup on a Mac was a bit slower and more complicated: we had to install software, and configuration options weren't as plentiful.