5 May 2008 12:00 GMT / By Chris Hall

Sometimes it is too easy to overlook Microsoft as an peripheral supplier. We look at their Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 7000.

Starting with the wireless aspect, it is a standard 2.4GHz wireless setup, with a USB dongle. The dongle slots neatly into the base of the mouse when not in use, but doesn’t sit flush, which is a minor design niggle.

The mouse itself brings plenty of buttons to the party, not just the scroll wheel and left and right buttons. You also get additional left and right buttons, the left defaults as a back button when browsing, whilst the right is the magnifier.

The magnifier is interesting, although we haven’t found a regular use for it yet: simply click the button and an adjustable magnification box opens. This could save you having to zoom in a document or allow you to look at, ahem, more interesting parts of an image, for example.

The scroll wheel has a good smooth action, better than previous clicking wheels. It actually hides a collection of features: firstly it is four-way scrolling, so on a document you get the option of left and right scrolling as well as the standard up and down, which it pretty useful. Secondly, click the wheel and you’ll enable Flip 3D.

Flip 3D plays to Vista’s strengths, but as most people still use XP, it is a useful tool. We got into the habit of calling it "the Mac thing", because you click the wheel and your open windows break out in miniature on your screen so you can pick a new window, which is useful when you have too much open to navigate along the toolbar.

The problem with some notebook mice is that they are too small – great for saving space in the bag, but too small when you settle down to do some real work once at your destination. This mouse doesn’t suffer from that problem and sits neatly into the hand.

The design allows it to be used in either the left- or right-hand, which as left-hander is very welcome indeed. The buttons are well-placed so it feels natural to use. The supplied software allows easy customisation of the buttons to do pretty much anything you want.

The mouse runs on one AA battery, so you’ll have no problem finding a replacement on your travels. There is a built-in LED that acts as a battery meter, so you’ll be well cared for in this department.

Verdict

Compact in design, but large enough to be your everyday mouse, the Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 7000 has plenty of features to meet your mousey needs.

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Review Recap

Made by

Microsoft

Price as reviewed

£25

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The good

Left- or right-handed, good size, plenty of buttons, Flip 3D

The bad

Dongle doesn’t sit flush in base of mouse

Quick verdict

Compact in design, but large enough to be your everyday mouse, the Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 7000 has plenty of features to meet your mousey needs

Score

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