Microsoft Hardware Blog

In our last installment of Hardware 101, we gave you a primer on the mouse and its buttons. This week, we pay homage to the mouse’s trusty desktop sidekick—the keyboard. We’ll also cover some ways to speed up common tasks by using keyboard shortcuts.

First, let’s cover the basics.

The keys on a standard QWERTY keyboard are grouped by function:

The typing keys (in yellow) include the alphanumeric characters that do most of your work. For the most part, they’re carried over from the layout of a typewriter’s keys.

The control keys (in red) can be used alone, or combined with other keys in keyboard shortcuts, which we’ll expand on below.

The function keys (in purple) are used to perform specific tasks depending on the program you’re using.

The navigation keys (in green) help you navigate through and edit a document or webpage. You can use the arrows to scroll carefully, or make larger jumps with Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down. Delete and Insert help you add or remove content quickly.

The numeric keypad (in blue) is available on most larger keyboards, and mimics a conventional calculator or adding machine. It’s handy for entering numbers quickly.

Now, breeze through your work with shortcuts.

Most of the programs you use will offer shortcuts to perform certain tasks more quickly than you can with a mouse. These shortcuts are often written as a combination of two keys. For example, the shortcut for copying content is “Ctrl+C”. To use this shortcut, you’ll hold down the “Ctrl” key, then press the “C” key.

These common keyboard shortcuts work across multiple programs:

Undo                Ctrl+Z
Cut                    Ctrl+X
Copy                 Ctrl+C
Paste                Ctrl+V
Delete               Del (sometimes Delete)

Find…                Ctrl+F
Find Next           F3
Replace…         Ctrl+H
Go to…               Ctrl+G

Select All            Ctrl+A

The first five are especially common, and you can use them in almost any Microsoft Office program. They’re great time-savers worth memorizing.

Next, make the ribbon reveal its secrets.

If you’re in a program that uses the ribbon, you can navigate menus using only your keyboard. Just press the “Alt” key. You should see overlays like the ones below. To get to a specific tab or function, press the key that’s listed in the overlay. In the example below, you would press “N” to switch to the “Insert” tab.

This is useful when removing your hands from the keyboard might cause an unnecessary disruption in your workflow. For instance, if you’re typing a lengthy document or entering a lot of data into a spreadsheet.

There’s more where that came from…

To become even more of a keyboard wiz, check out our full list of keyboard shortcuts.

Learn more about our keyboard offerings on www.microsoft.com/hardware.

- Hardware Team

We recently interviewed two of the artists who contributed to our new Limited Edition Artist Series collection. This week we’re featuring Stina Persson, who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. Persson draws inspiration from a variety of sources to create art that spans genres and generations.

What city do you currently live in?
Stockholm.

What about this city makes you feel most creative?
That nature is so integrated into the city. My home and studio are surrounded by trees.

How long have you been a designer/ making art?
I have always been making things—a true child of the ‘70s.

How would you describe your style?
I am constantly searching to strike the right balance between the edgy and the elegant, the beautiful and the raw.

What is your favorite tool or medium?
Ink.

What or who is the biggest inspiration for your work?
My creative friends and the surrounding thrift stores.

Who is your favorite artist or art movement/era and why?
I like The Vienna Secessionists a lot.

What was your inspiration for this work?
Patterns and shapes from the ‘70s fabrics I find in flea markets, and the leaves outside my studio window.

What three words best describe your design?
Organic. Colorful. Interesting.

How do you want people to feel when using the mouse with your design?
Creative.

Stina’s mouse is now available for purchase at Amazon.com for a limited time, so pick up yours now and download the free wallpaper for your PC!

- Hardware Team

Last week we interviewed designer Sally Zou, one of several global artists who contributed to our new Limited Edition Artist Series collection. This week we’re profiling Japanese designer Kenzo Minami, whose mouse is also part of our new collection.

Originally from Hyogo, Japan, Minami graduated from Parsons School for Design with a bachelor’s degree in product design. He resides in New York City, where he produces work that has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Men’s Vogue and Fashionize.

In 2003, Kenzo was the first artist commissioned to create a mural painting for Nike’s art project space in New York, and he was one of four artists chosen in 2007 to be featured in the FAMOUS CARS + FAMOUS PEOPLE show, along with Andy Warhol, Robert Longo and David Hockney.  Keep reading to discover his biggest influence and the three words he uses to describe his mouse.

How long have you been a designer/ making art?
I’m sure if you ask anyone who does the kind of stuff we do, many will say we’ve been doing it “our whole lives.” Officially (or professionally), I was first paid for my work as a TV set designer. At the time, I was still a product design major, so I would say 15 years.

How would you describe your style?
Precise.

What is your favorite tool or medium?
At the moment, I’m pretty into using colorless acrylic medium for its texture. I’m also having fun silk-screening my designs, as well as printing them on newsprints.

What or who is the biggest inspiration for your work?
Words.

Who is your favorite artist or art movement/era and why?
I’m not sure if they are exactly “artists” (though they definitely are to me), but some of my biggest influences as a kid are people like Douglas Trumbull, Rick Baker or Stan Winston, and all the very creative effect work they have done in the field of special effect supervision, production design and film production.

What was your inspiration for your mouse design?
It started off as the bone structure of a hand holding the mouse. I then expanded and combined it with motifs of the nervous network system, biological neural work, architectural structure, pipings, biomechanical wings, primal patterns and so on. I also wanted to keep the feeling of it still being under construction, or in the process of expanding.

What three words that describe your design best?
Biomechanical. Interconnecting. Accelerating.

How do you want people to feel when using the mouse with your design?
That you are connected to, and becoming part of, information networks and architectures.

What advice would you give to young designers?
Work hard. If you think that you work hard enough already, work harder—since someone else out there certainly does.

Kenzo’s mouse is now available for purchase at Microsoft Store for a limited time, so pick up yours now and download the free wallpaper for your PC!

(Check back throughout the month for more interviews with our mouse artists.)

- Hardware Team

A great house is built on a solid foundation, right? We’re launching a series of articles on the basics of how to use your Hardware products. There may be a few tips and tricks you didn’t know about!

We’re starting out with one of the most humble yet invaluable pieces of hardware: the mouse.

The typical mouse has three buttons, the primary (left-click), secondary (right-click), and the scroll wheel.

The primary button will, as its name suggests, take care of all your primary selection functions and is used to manipulate items on the screen in the most basic and intuitive ways. Such functions include item selection, double click selection, and drag-and-drop.

The secondary button lets you get down to the deeper layers of content behind items you may interact with. Many times, by clicking on an item with the secondary button, you are presented with a menu like the one shown below. As you can see, this menu shows you all of the deeper functions of the item.

Third, we have the scroll wheel. The scroll wheel allows you to vertically scroll through a page by rolling the wheel either up or down. However, many mice actually allow you to scroll horizontally by pushing the scroll wheel left or right. In addition to this, many mice also have the added functionality of having a clickable scroll wheel, which typically brings up a navigation icon that allows you to scroll in both the horizontal and vertical axes simply by moving the mouse in the direction you wish to scroll.

Of course, several of our mice feature touch technology. Our innovative touch mice—Touch Mouse, Explorer Touch Mouse, and Arc Touch Mouse—offer a more natural way to navigate your PC. You can speed through long documents and web pages, move horizontally in spreadsheets, and much more—using simple finger movements instead of clicks.

Get the full story about Microsoft touch technology.

Finally, there is always the option to customize your mouse for your specific preferences. Take a look at this quick video to learn more.

Whether wired or wireless, touch or traditional, we’re sure to have the perfect mouse for you. Check out the wide selection of Microsoft Hardware mice.

We hope this has been helpful, and make sure to check out our next Hardware 101 post in this series.

- Hardware Team

Over the last year, we partnered with a group of artists from around the globe on our new Limited Edition Artist Series collection. We recently had a chance to chat with one of the artists, Sally Zou, who hails from Shanghai.

Sally began drawing when she was five and hasn’t stopped since. She is currently a member of MOMOROBO and the EDGE Creative Collection, and has collaborated with various brands—including Nike, Converse, Lacoste and Tiger Beer—on an array of projects including tees, mobile apps and beer bottles.  Read on to learn more about her style, inspiration and advice for young designers.

How would you describe your style?
Versa-style! I don’t really want to limit my artistic expressions to a fixed style.

What is your favorite tool or medium?
I prefer the old ‘skool’ way… Plain-old simple pencil and paper!

What or who is the biggest inspiration for your work?
I try to find inspiration outside of the visual art mediums I work in. So, I look to things like movies, music, and food for inspiration.

Who is your favorite artist or art movement/era and why?
Damien Hirst and the French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague). I really admire the former’s absurdness and the latter’s spirit and aesthetic style.

What was your inspiration for this work?
A mix between The 1961 Monkey King “Havoc in Heaven” Chinese animated film and The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.”

What three words best describe your mouse design?
Swag, swag and swag!

How do you want people to feel when using the mouse with your design?
I hope they feel thrilled and creative— and that they use it to design something else!

What advice would you give to young designers?
Always save your work!

Sally’s mouse is now available for purchase at Microsoft Store for a limited time, so don’t miss your chance. And while you’re at it, download the free wallpaper for your PC!

- Hardware Team

Spring is here and we decided to take some of our favorite gear into the great outdoors and celebrate the season! Check out these fresh new looks:

With all the exciting new products available, ranging from Artist mice and Limited Edition mice to Skype-certified HD Webcams, why not outfit your whole family with the newest gear this season? Give your desk a good spring cleaning and replace the old gear with new, colorful products from Microsoft Hardware.

And starting this week we’ve launched a spring themed Pinterest contest: Pin It To Win It! Use the below as inspiration for a new Pinterest board and share the link. It’s that simple. Doing so makes you eligible to win a basket of sugar-free goodies worth over $300 like an Artist Edition mouse, HD Lifecam and more! Learn more at Windows on Pinterest.

- Hardware Team

By 2015 37.2% of the global workforce will be mobile, a number that is expected to increase exponentially for years after that¹. Fortunately, laptops, smartphones, and their peripherals are becoming more accommodating to the worker on the move. We’re breaking down the top 5 things you should never hit the road without.

1. Laptop
   This new class of ultra-fast, ultra-compact laptops is the new standard for mobile productivity. Models such as the Acer Aspire S3 running Windows 7 provide lightning-fast computing, all in a tiny package that has never looked so good.
   
2. Arc Touch Mouse
   The road is no place for superfluous wires and bulk. With the Arc Touch Mouse, you have a fully wireless mouse that folds flat for easy storage. What’s more, the Arc Touch Mouse’s BlueTrack Technology allows you to use your mouse on just about any surface, even the leg of that guy sleeping next to you on a train.
   
3. Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000
   Having a good Bluetooth keyboard is invaluable when it comes to remotely operating your computer during presentations, or just as a more ergonomic alternative to your laptop’s built-in keyboard. In addition, with Bluetooth technology, you get wireless connectivity while saving space in your computer’s USB array
   
4. LifeCam HD-6000 and LifeChat LX-3000
   As a mobile worker, the world is your office, so shouldn’t it have all the proper accouterments? With an HD webcam and USB headset, you can turn any place into a conference room, and now with the Skype Certified LifeCam HD-6000 and LifeChat LX-3000, you’ll feel like you are face to face no matter where you are.
   
   
   
5. Smartphone with Wi-Fi Hotspot capability
   We’ve all been there, you need to access the Internet but a Wi-Fi connection is nowhere to be found. Luckily, many phones such as a Windows Phone 7.5 feature an Internet sharing capability for laptops and other devices. With the press of a button, your phone turns into a wireless hotspot that can provide a shared Internet connection for up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices.²

– Hardware Team

Today we are excited to announce that Microsoft Hardware is expanding its collection of Artist Edition mice, ushering in five new designs intended to complement the way our users live, work and play. The new patterns gracing the surfaces of the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 and Arc Touch Mouse are brought to us by five artists who hail from diverse regions across the globe—from Stockholm to New York City—and use their backyards, cityscapes and local culture to inform their designs. The new artists include:

• Kenzo Minami
• Stina Persson
• Oh Joy!
• Tchmo
• Sally Zou

From across the world to the palm of your hand, Microsoft Hardware is bringing modern artwork to your desktop to help infuse color and life into your computing experience.

In addition to the new artist designs, we are also today announcing several limited edition colors to add a pop of color to your desk or laptop bag. The Explorer Touch Mouse will be available in Dahlia Pink and White, and the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 will be available in Aqua Blue, Citron Green, Cobalt Blue, Dahlia Pink, Flame Red, White and Black.

To celebrate the introduction of these new mice, we invite you to take part in our Microsoft Hardware Pinterest Contest. Please visit the Microsoft Hardware Pinboard and build a board inspired by one of the mice displayed—focus on the colors, the design, or your favorite workspace. We look forward to seeing what you create!

If you’d like to take a closer look at the new patterns and colors available, please visit the Arc Touch Mouse, Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 and Explorer Touch Mouse product pages.

- Hardware Team

Today marks an exciting day at Microsoft as the availability of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview was announced this morning in Barcelona. If you haven’t been following the news around Windows 8, we encourage you to check out the Windows Experience Blog today to get a complete look at what’s new with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and help you decide if downloading the Consumer Preview is right for you.

A lot of the buzz with Windows 8 has been around touch technology and how we’re changing the way you can interact with your PC. Touch is a first-class citizen in Windows 8, but so is the mouse and keyboard – it’s all about a no compromise approach.   The tools we know and love today for interacting with our PCs, like mice and keyboards, remain important devices for getting tasks done quickly, powerfully, and comfortably. In fact, today we are announcing that the Microsoft Touch Mouse – the winner of Engadget’s “Peripheral of the Year” award – will be updated for Windows 8, as it’s an ideal tool for quickly navigating the Windows 8 Metro-style user interface where horizontal scrolling is a fundamental need. In the meantime, its sleek design and ergonomic shape combines the classic functionality of a traditional mouse with advanced touch gestures that make everyday tasks more fluid and intuitive.

We’ll have more updates to come on the Touch Mouse sometime around Windows 8 general availability, so stay tuned for details.

For those of you who decide to download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (or perhaps already have!) you may be wondering how to best work with your current Microsoft mouse and keyboard and the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Starting today, we’ve launched a new beta app for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview called Microsoft Device Center that will help you more easily customize your Microsoft mouse and keyboard to make the most of your computing experience. Available for download here, the Microsoft Device Center beta combines Microsoft’s existing mouse software (IntelliPoint) and keyboard software (IntelliType) into one simple solution. Remapping your mouse buttons or assigning keys on your keyboard to your favorite file or webpage is easier than ever in the Microsoft Device Center beta for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

Stay tuned as we’ll have plenty more to share in the coming months!

- Hardware Team