Manufacturers, it seems, are never happy. Once upon a time, the common keyboard was content just to have its usual buttons on it, perhaps with the addition of a Windows key to the right of the space bar.

But no new features means selling no new products, and as part of the Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 5000, Microsoft has gone hell for leather with the included keyboard. It has the media keys we've seen more of over the past few years, along with extra controls for dealing with digital photography. There are functions to control media playback and volume, while programmable favourites are above the F keys at the top of the board and to the left are buttons to launch Slide Show, Print, Send, Edit and Library functions.

There's also a handy slider to control zooming in and out of digital images. To bolster the digital photography theme, the package is bundled with the Standard Edition of Digital Image 2006. Useful if you haven't got it, we guess, but it's not the leader in its field, by a long way.

Still, the photo functions are actually surprisingly usable, and far more than the straight novelty we originally imagined. The zoom slider in particular, once you've trained yourself into the habit of using it, is genuinely useful and we found ourselves using it more and more. Hardly essential, perhaps, but worth having.

As for the main keyboard, it's great. Really. It benefits from the keys not being of uniform size, lending itself to both touch-typists and two-finger key-pokers. It also has a really comfortable built-in wrist rest (the most comfortable rest of the three units we're testing), and the keys themselves have a comfortable level of travel to them.

The mouse is good too. A solid, wireless rodent, it features the vertical and horizontal scroll wheel that Microsoft introduced a few years ago, and the ergonomics are sheer quality. A couple of buttons mounted onto the left side of the mouse add extra controls, and Microsoft has built magnification controls into them.

As with all the functions, the user-friendly software allows you to program them to specific tasks, and the product is a bit of a joy. It's a cinch to set up, and given the trouble we've had with some wireless desksets in previous years, that's a welcome feature.

In the past, the price has been the main stumbling block, but here it seems quite reasonable for what you get. Some won't perhaps warm to the uneven size of the keyboard's keys, but we'd suggest that for the majority of people it will be fine, and that's the only grumble of note we could raise for what is a very strong product.

A quality keyboard and mouse set, with photo features that may be a bit of a gimmick, but they're nonetheless a useful gimmick.