As I’ve blogged previously I recently purchased a new Dell Laptop for work. I’m not a big fan of the trackpad on any laptop so the first thing I threw into the laptop bag was a wireless mouse I had lying around. After a day of using it however I wasn’t happy with it as a solution. There were several times I nearly snapped of the little dongle thingy, plus the inconvenience of losing a USB port when you only have two made me think there must be another solution.

A colleague suggested seeing as the laptop has Bluetooth why not a Bluetooth mouse, which sounded like a very sensible idea to me.

A quick google however shows a distinct lack of option in the Bluetooth mouse area, Logitech make a few and Microsoft make two; a very ugly wedge design and the Notebook 5000 Bluetooth one. Checking a few stores prices and availability I settled on the Microsoft one (not the ugly one), and here it is.

  

Initial impressions after getting it out of the box were quite good, nice white colour, decent weight although perhaps a little too small for full-time use but workable. It also came with a snazzy neoprene case to protect it while kicking around in my laptop bag.

Then however came the job of trying to pair it with the laptop. Why is Bluetooth still so hard? Anytime I’ve tried to connect two devices with Bluetooth it’s been an exercise in frustration, and this was no exception. I’d have thought a Microsoft mouse connecting to Windows 7 should be a walk in the park.

I followed the included setup guide, turn it on, press the button on the bottom until the light alternates green and red, hit add device on the laptop, and it should be done. No such luck. Whilst the laptop found it, and proceeded to the next step it still never seemed to install the drivers for the mouse. Checking the properties still showed Manufacturer, Model and description all as unknown, the only entry it did have was category mouse. It also failed to how anything under the mice and other devices category in device manager.

I tried uninstalling and re-installing, rebooting, different batteries but In the end re-installing the latest Bluetooth drivers from the Dell website and then re-installing the mouse fixed it. Given this was basically a Windows 7 install from the factory I’d have though Bluetooth drivers should’ve been OK, I guess you live and learn.

So yeah liking the new mouse, and fully recommend for any ultrabook or netbook users out there, well worth not having a USB port needlessly taken up, or risk snapping off a dongle by banging it on something.

 

– Luke