Spending money on a keyboard and mouse may seem an extravagance—odds are your PC came with a perfectly functional set. Yet a good keyboard and mouse can speed up your workflow, look stylish, and even lessen your risk of repetitive stress injuries.

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 7000 ($129.95 list), due out in April, does all three. For starters, it looks like no other desktop keyboard/mouse set on the market. The keyboard has a very slim profile, with a sleek border of translucent plastic and chrome trim. The translucence is meant to match the Aero effect in Vista. It looks fantastic, aside from the inevitable post-lunch finger smudges. The mouse is similarly sleek, with its matching chrome trim.

Keys are laid out in Microsoft's Comfort Curve style, like a smiley face that approves of your ergonomic hand positions. This configuration is not as easy on the wrists as a split keyboard like the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop, but it's definitely more comfortable than a straight keyboard. It comes with detachable rubber risers that give you a little lift on the front or the back of the keyboard (a lifted front is better for your wrists). There's also a front wrist rest, which was a little too narrow for my comfort. I like the wide padded wrist rest on the Natural Ergonomic keyboard a lot better, though it doesn't look as cool.

I found the mouse quite comfortable. It's more ergonomic than a standard mouse, but not as much as the Natural Ergonomic's mouse (which I call "the baseball mouse" because of its size and heft). It's molded to fit your hand, with grooves for your thumb, ring, and pinky fingers. Lefties beware: It's about as non-ambidextrous as they come. You can recharge the mouse using a simple mouse dock and the included rechargeable AAA batteries. Both mouse and keyboard have battery-life indicators.

A small USB dongle pairs with both the mouse and the keyboard. Installation and pairing are as easy as could be. I plugged in the dongle and was typing and mousing a moment later. Both devices use proprietary 2.4-GHz wireless technology for a claimed 30-foot range, which we easily exceeded in our office, amid a lot of potential interference, to boot. Microsoft told us the transceivers use intelligent technology that "hops" frequencies when they encounter interference on the frequency they're using. This is a difficult claim to verify with proprietary wireless technology. Suffice it to say we got connectivity over greater than the claimed distance, even in an office packed with other wireless devices.

The Desktop 7000 keyboard comes with the standard assortment of media-centric hot keys and media controls, along with a Windows Gadget button for Vista users. It carries the same row of enhanced F keys as other keyboards, but on this one, the F keys display little icons of their hot key functions (Send, Open, Spell-check, Undo, and the like). The icons really do enhance usability. I especially like the three Floating Favorites keys, which are positioned in the translucent plastic border. Just hold them down to set them as a hot key to the current Web page.

Splurging on a keyboard and mouse might seem to be an extravagance, but in this case, it's one that your wrists and eyes just might thank you for.

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