Microsoft Designer Bluetooth Mouse

Microsoft’s new “Designer” line of Bluetooth mice is pitched at “designers,” but honestly, designers probably wouldn’t touch this thing — same way a lot of Apple fans who swear the Magic Mouse is great wouldn’t actually put up with that feel.

The full name is Microsoft Designer Bluetooth Mouse. It’s flat and portable, and it takes the unusual AAA battery, which means my pile of Eneloops are useless here. The upside of that battery choice is a big drop in weight, so the trade-off does make some sense.

There’s not much to it: left and right buttons, a scroll wheel, and a middle click on the wheel.

The wheel is a bit more reliable than your average mouse’s, if only because of the shape they went with. It’s fairly long, so it doesn’t feel too bad in use.

By most measures this is a decent enough choice. The big problem: it supports Windows 8, Android 4.4, MacOSX 10.10 — but not the Linux desktop.

Pair it on a Linux desktop and you get this: it pairs fine, but it never gets recognized as a mouse.

Some guy online says it’s because Ubuntu isn’t using BlueZ 5, but I tried Fedora 22, which ships BlueZ 5.29 by default, and got the same result.

The Logitech Anywhere MX gets the same treatment, except Logitech has Unifying and Microsoft doesn’t. Maybe the kernel will support this thing someday.

Still, for a Surface Pro 3 it’s not bad at all.