#Microsoft ergonomic keyboard 4000 adjust key sensitivity pro#
The Natural Ergonomic 4000 retains all the great qualities of the Natural Pro and significantly improves on it. I may experiment with this later, but I removed it for now. The keyboard comes with a pre-installed reverse slope tilt attachment, which supposedly offers a better neutral typing position. So this is a net gain even if I never click those buttons once.
The odds of me accidentally hitting the dead zone buttons is nil. But I used to accidentally hit them when my fingers slipped. I never used the zoom/scroll functions located on the left side of my two previous keyboards. I'm not sure how useful the "dead zone" buttons (back/forward, zoom) will be.I've never seen that arrangement, but I rarely use the numpad anyway. Instead you get an extra row of numpad keys (equal, parens, backspace). They dropped the sleep button, which is traditionally in the upper right of every Microsoft keyboard.But they should bring it back, dammit, because it's so convenient to plug in your mouse or a memory card right on your keyboard! I can't really fault Microsoft here because USB ports are extremely rare on any keyboard these days. Many of the other keys got larger (tab, tilde), but Enter somehow got smaller. I particularly like the LEDs being front and center so I can more easily see when caps/f/num lock is accidentally set.Īll is not perfect, however. The otherwise wasted "dead" space in the middle of keyboard is put to use with the zoom slider, LED indicators, and back/forward buttons.I love the favorites that was the only good thing about the Digital Media Pro keyboard I was previously using. And they're more logically organized into three distinct areas. Only the essentials (favorites, home/search/mail, volume, calc) are present. The multimedia buttons at the top of the keyboard are radically simplified.So many wired keyboards are stuck in that disposable, plastic-y $19.99 low-end ghetto nowadays. This keyboard feels truly solid, like the old Natural Pro.I know it sounds odd, but it's way more comfortable than any plastic palmrest I've ever used. You can't tell from the pictures, but the palm rests are actually padded with some kind of leatherette or naugahyde.It's mostly black.* And black is way cooler than beige-y white.My fingers feel at home again! Here are the highlights: I'm happy to report that the Natural Ergonomic 4000 is a truly worthy successor to the Natural Pro. They just didn't feel right to my hands and fingers.
But neither of these were ergonomic, and both had a very cheap feeling. I had reluctantly switched to the Digital Media Pro after some flirtations with the Logitech Elite. This was a dark time for ergo keyboard enthusiasts who happened to be programmers.īy 2004, people had started to mock my ugly-but-comfortable 1999-era Natural Pro. There were a handful of rare and obscure exceptions, but in general, they just weren't being made any more. After that, there were hardly any ergonomic split keyboards with standard PgUp/PgDn clusters. The MS Natural Pro was discontinued in early 2001. This keyboard is the natural heir to the obsolete but much loved Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro: Now that I own one, I'm not excited any more. I was plenty excited when I saw Microsoft was releasing a new non-mangled ergonomic keyboard - the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. Keyboarding: Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000