--- title: "The new MS 4000 keyboard and a ThinkPad go great together" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/10/the-new-ms-4000-keyboard-and-a-thinkpad-go-great-together.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/10/the-new-ms-4000-keyboard-and-a-thinkpad-go-great-together.html" published: "2005-10-10T12:24:00" updated: "2005-10-10T12:24:00" tags: ["Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I just got the new keyboard from Microsoft - the ergo 4000 , and it's pretty cool. The coolest feature for me, forgetting the shortcut keys and all that, is the fact that the keyboard is high enough in the air to…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # The new MS 4000 keyboard and a ThinkPad go great together By Roy Osherove October 10, 2005 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published October 10, 2005; technical details may be outdated. I just got the new keyboard from Microsoft - the [ergo 4000](http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=ergo+4000&hl=en&lr=&pwst=1&sa=N&tab=ff&oi=froogler), and it's pretty cool. The coolest feature for me, forgetting the shortcut keys and all that, is the fact that the keyboard is high enough in the air to actually fit on top of my ThinkPad T41's keyboard covering it completely, effectively allow me to save space while replacing my laptop's keyboard. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but **that's** the killer app for me. **Update:** \- The included software also allows you to **disable the damn caps-lock key**. About time. \- Nice zoom button, though it seems to be mainly used for scrolling.. \- It even comes with special keys for "=", "(" and ")"   (dare I say "programmer keys"?). Unfortunately, they are positioned right above the Numpad keys, so it's not that comfortable to use them while programming :( \- The ergonomic positioning is great. Really comfortable! \- You can't install the keyboard software inside a VPC image (VPC is officially not supported on install), but the main functionality seems to work just fine anyway, including the scrolling in VS.NET. \- The F-Lock key stays **on** by default when you reboot your machine! Thank you!(at least on my ThinkPad) \- If there's one thing missing from this keyboard it's a set of two buttons for the left and right mouse clicks and a mouse moving little red pad(just like in a notebook). Do that and I can free my hands from the mouse for about 90% of the time. (yes I know that enter and application keys play the same role and left and right, but still.) ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - Oct 19, 2005 ### [Annoying pop up on this blog? No more, I hope.](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/19/annoying-pop-up-on-this-blog-no-more-i-hope.html) - Oct 16, 2005 ### [When LINQ and Yukon meet](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/16/when-linq-and-yukon-meet.html) - Oct 2, 2005 ### [Two small irrelevant tips](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/2/two-small-irrelevant-tips.html) - Aug 23, 2005 ### [The DIMES project aims to map the internet - with your help](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/8/23/the-dimes-project-aims-to-map-the-internet-with-your-help.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/