Whether you’re looking for something to excite a busy mom on the go or the teenaged gaming enthusiast who barely breaks from the computer for meals, our team has done the research and is here to help!

For the Visionary Designer or Early adopter…

• If only hardware could take the runway, the Arc Keyboard would steal the show. Weighing in at less than a pound, the Arc Keyboard throws the standard keyboard a chic curve. It’s small enough to move easily around the house, with sleek lines to fit in seamlessly with any stylish home accessory. Best of all, the domed keyset of the Arc Keyboard is comfortable to use whether resting on a lap or on the kitchen counter.

• Find a new level of elegance in the Arc Touch Mouse: With clean lines and edges, the Arc Touch Mouse is made for the way we live today. Its flat shape makes it easy to throw in a bag or stack on a notebook. When you’re ready to work, just pop it up into its curved form. And a touch strip with vibration feedback means easy, controlled scrolling.

For the Mobile Maniac…

• Boldness and sophistication bring life to the selection of colors and patterns found with the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 and 4000. Both of these mice provide portable, wireless freedom in a comfortable, compact shape – a must for the mobile enthusiast on your gift list.

For the Well Connected…

• The LifeCam Studio is the perfect gift for someone who wants the next best thing to being there in person.  Keep in touch with family and friends across the country or chat with the BFF you rarely see because of work, school, or other commitments. 

• Even better! Pair LifeCam Studio, which offers a 1080p sensor for the best possible image at any resolution, with the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, the first consumer IM program with HD video calling.
• And if you’re looking for a webcam under $50, the LifeCam HD-5000 offers a 720p HD sensor and Auto Focus—it’s the only cam to do this for the price.

For the Ultimate Gamer…

• Call the shots and don’t miss a minute of the action with the SideWinder X4 Keyboard. A virtual command center at your fingertips, this new keyboard gives you powerful programming and versatility to enhance your work or game play. But it wouldn’t be complete without a gaming mouse as the perfect partner in crime!

• Do you know someone who feels the need…the need for speed? Keep the action fast and furious by giving the SideWinder X3 Mouse. With features that put you ahead of the competition, this versatile gaming mouse delivers speed, performance, and comfort for either hand.

Sound too good to be true? We promise it is.

Check out these and other great gifts at http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/ and let us know if you get BIG smiles for bringing Microsoft Hardware home this holiday.

-Microsoft Hardware Team

Under the sleek skin of our latest mouse lies a complicated mechanism just 5 millimeters thick comprising over 90 parts that took hundreds of hours to design. The Mechanical Design team worked closely with the User Experience and Industrial Designer teams to dial in the look, feel and even the sound of the Arc Touch Mouse. Each of those 90+ parts has a specific purpose, all working towards an arc that’s strong enough to stay curved during use, reliable enough to withstand bending over 40,000 cycles, and of course provide that satisfying snap when you bend or flatten the mouse.

Selected from more than 30 different initial concepts and prototypes, the tail mechanism design uses two flexible metal sheets that are fixed at one end. As the mouse bends, the free ends of these metal sheets move relative to one another. There is a strong magnet attached to the bottom sheet. Shuttling between two pieces of metal, this magnet provides the latching force to hold the mouse in the flat and bent shapes.

Additional parts prevent the metal sheets from separating, twisting, bending the wrong way, or breaking under load. Here’s a look at how the Arc Touch Mouse design evolved:

Over the course of a year, the design progressed from concept to prototype to production, all leading to the upcoming release. If this just piques your interest and you want to know more, I highly recommend checking out our “Meet the Arc Touch Designer” video here.

Be one of the first to get your hands on it and let us know what you think!

It’s funny to see how my friends outside of my job respond to the special edition colored mice that I work on every day.  I show them some new colors or patterns and they have a really emotional response.  Whether they like the colors or designs at first glance, they always elicit an emotional response.  Usually they get excited and say, “I’ve never thought about a mouse looking so cool.”

We here at Microsoft Hardware have a team that specializes in color and design forecasting that looks forward to trends on the horizon. Since we know the colors that will be popular, we can translate them to our tech products and ensure that they’re relevant for a particular season. And the new special edition colored mice coming soon really do look cool – check out the latest hues for this holiday season, available online and on store shelves now!

Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500: Glossy White and Glossy Black

Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000: Wool Blue Metallic and Ruby Metallic

Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000: Ruby and Light Orchid

- Bill Jukes, Product Marketing Manager

The focus of the mouse was to meet the needs of our customers’ mobile lifestyles; our user research showed that our customers wanted a mouse with a very small form factor so it was easy to take with them, but yet still large enough to be comfortable and help them get their work done.

Please check out this video to learn more about the inspiration behind the Arc Touch Mouse and the process of how it evolved from over 50 prototypes to the finished product.

We hope you enjoy the Arc Touch Mouse as much as we enjoyed designing it.

-Young Kim

You can see, Arc Touch is all about innovative design.  The mouse is not dead as some articles have said recently, but needs are evolving.  Most of us now use our PCs and mice in new ways and new places.  In talking to notebook PC users, we realized we needed to find a way for the mouse to transition easier from place to place.  This mouse completely flattens for portability to easily fit in your pocket or laptop bag, and also bends for comfortable use.  This mouse is perfect for the person on-the-go that doesn’t want to compromise on style.

Aside from the design, one of my favorite features is the new touch strip that was put in the mouse for controlled scrolling with just the flick of a finger. Now I can quickly scroll through my inbox and stop on a dime with a quick tap on the middle of the strip.  I do this a lot while I’m thinking or on a phone call.

From fidgeting with the mouse and popping it up from lying flat to the new scroll, this mouse is truly in a category all its own. And it might be too early to think about for some, but we know there are a lot of you out there getting your holiday lists ready so put Arc Touch on it!  Pre-orders start today on Amazon.com, Buy.com and BestBuy.com and will be shipped this December.

Check out more information at www.arctouchmouse.com, and let us know what you think!

We’ve made a video to show you what inspired these patterns and how the new graphics were designed. Take a look and let us know what you think!

-Lindsey Kujawski and Kate Bailey

If you’d like a closer look at all the patterns in the Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 Studio Series line, please visit the Microsoft Product Page. 

Patterns Micro, Botanic and Cosmic are available exclusive to Best Buy and Best Buy.com, and patterns Downtown, Crania and Pirouette will be available at other retailers in-store and online in September for $39.95.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog entry about how to pick the right mouse, and in the course of writing that post we discussed “what about people who want trackballs?” and “what about mice for left-handed people?” We decided to write a separate blog entry to talk more about how we decide what mice to include in our lineup. I talked to Elaine Ansell, who is the Product Manager for our mouse line, to get her thoughts about why we make what we make.

Q: Elaine, can you start by telling us a bit about what you do as the Mouse Product Manager?

A:  One of my main responsibilities as the Mouse Product Manager is to think about what products and technologies we need to develop in the next three to five years in order to meet our customers’ needs. For example, a while ago we realized that more and more people were carrying laptops around, so we introduced our first mobile mouse. Now we know that our customers need to use their mobile mice in lots of different places, so we developed our BlueTrack technology to track on difficult surfaces, and I make the case for where to incorporate that technology into our mouse products. I also look very closely at the value proposition for each and every mouse, so we have a very clear idea of how and why that mouse is going to meet the needs of our target consumers.

Q: What are some of the factors that go into choosing which mice we put in our lineup?

A: We’re always trying to balance the needs of a wide range of customers. For some people, ergonomics is the most important consideration. We have mice with varying degrees of ergonomic design to choose from. For other people, style is the most important. We’ve created some really beautiful mice, like our Arc Mouse, and our Studio Series of mice with patterns inspired by nature. We maintain a balance of wired and wireless mice, and mice sized for different uses or hand sizes. We also know that some people need comfort and style at value prices, while other people will spend more to get the mouse of their dreams, so we offer mice in different price ranges. Sometimes a mouse has been around for a while, so we replace it with a similar but fresher mouse design. Finally, we have to consider our retail partners and what styles and price points they want to buy from us to sell to their target end customers. Brick and mortar retailers only have so much shelf space, so they pick and choose to get an assortment of products that will sell well.

We balance all of this in our portfolio by doing a lot of research and a lot of listening. We do surveys and focus groups. We look at market research. We meet with the buyers for major retailers. We talk to our subsidiaries around the world to find out what will sell well in other countries. We bring hundreds of potential customers into our labs every year.* We keep up with the amazing advances being made by our Microsoft Research group. We turn our designers loose to create beautiful new forms and finishes. In the end it comes down to really finding out what our customers want and delivering that in a way that makes sense for our business. We keep track of how well we’ve pleased our customers by taking note of the trends for what they’re buying and what they aren’t.

Q: So why don’t mice made specifically for lefties make the cut?

A: About 10% of the general population is left handed. Our research shows that about half of those people use the mice in their left hand, while the other half uses the mouse primarily in their right hand (including several people who work in Microsoft Hardware.) There are also left-handed people who switch between left and right mouse usage to help reduce repetitive stress injuries, and right-handed people who mouse left to alleviate pain from mousing right. We decided to concentrate our mouse line on making great ambidextrous mice that are comfortable in either hand so we have several options at affordable price points, like our Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 and our Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000. We even have some ergonomic ambidextrous mice, including the Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000 and the Wireless Mouse 5000.

Q: What about trackballs?

A: We recognize that some people are very passionate about trackballs, but this is a very small subset of our customer base and it didn’t make business sense for us to continue that product line. We are continuing to investigate ways to make it easier for mobile mousers to use less space. For people who use trackballs primarily for ergonomic reasons, we make mice like our Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000.

We know one mouse doesn’t fit all, but we’re always working to balance our portfolio so everyone can find a mouse they can love.

* Would you like to help us make the best possible products? Sign up to be participant in our User Research Studies at the Microsoft User Research site.

1)      What size and shape of mouse is best for you? Mice come in two categories of size. Mobile or laptop mice tend to be a little smaller than standard sized mice so you can pack them away more easily. Depending on your mousing habits, you might not need to use a mobile mouse for extended periods of time, so you can get away with a smaller mouse that is more portable. Mobile mice can also work well for people with small hands, like me. If you like a larger mouse, you might actually prefer our SideWinder mouse as your everyday mouse, even if you aren’t into gaming. You can find out the dimensions of any Microsoft mouse by going to the product details pagefor the device and looking at the detailed picture.

2)      What type of connection is best for you? Mice are either wired or wireless. If you prefer less clutter and the freedom of no wires, then a wireless mouse is for you. Most wireless mice require a wireless transceiver to be plugged into an available USB port. Many newer wireless mice, particularly notebook or laptop mice, have very small Nano transceivers that barely stick out from the USB port. If you really can’t stand the idea of carrying around (or losing) a transceiver, you can consider a Bluetooth mouse. To use a Bluetooth device, you must have either an internal or external Bluetooth radio in your computer.

Another factor to consider is that wireless devices need batteries. Some mice are built to use rechargeable batteries and come with chargers. If you use a mouse with alkaline batteries, you can help extend battery life by remembering to turn off the mouse when it’s not in use. A primary advantage of wired mice is that there is never a need for battery replacements.

3)      What type of scroll wheel is best for you? The first scroll wheels had a bumpy feel to them as you roll them. Those are called “detent” scroll wheels. They are useful when you want more control over scrolling a row at a time in an Excel spreadsheet or want to swap weapons in a PC game. More recently Microsoft came out with scroll wheels that give a smooth, continuous scroll experience that lets you glide through long documents. Some people are die-hard detent scroll wheel fans, while others prefer smooth scrolling, so it’s good to know which you prefer and look for that feature in your wheel. Also, some scroll wheels scroll both vertically and horizontally, called 4-way scrolling.

4)      What special features do you need in a mouse? Some people never use more than the basic left click, right click, and scroll, but other people want as many extra buttons as they can get. Some mice are specifically tailored for ergonomic comfort, like the Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000, which has a design inspired by the comfortable shape of a baseball and great for people who experience discomfort from standard mice. Some mice come in just one color while other lines have a variety of colors to choose from. Some mice are designed for specific tasks like gaming or giving presentations. BlueTrack mice have special tracking that makes them good for mousing on odd surfaces like your kitchen countertop or upholstered couch. My personal favorite, the Arc Mouse, was designed to be a full-sized mouse that looks stylishly curved, but folds up small enough to fit in my pocket as I run from meeting to meeting. And it comes in purple, my favorite color!

Of course the best way to choose a mouse is to get your hands on it and use it. Many retailers provide sample mice that you can touch or even try out at the computer displays. What features are most important to you when choosing a mouse?