"Normal wear"

[unixronin]

I believe I've previously commented on issues with the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.  You can go look for the prior post if you want to; I'm not going to.  Instead, I'll briefly summarize the issues:

• The MS Natural 4000 is frequently not recognized at boot time as a keyboard, even by motherboards that are aware of USB keyboards.  This causes "no keyboard connected" warnings, and can cause problems getting into the BIOS setup if you have to.
• The keyboard will sometimes spontaneously begin auto-repeating a key you didn't even press.  (n and t are common.)  It can be quite difficult to get it to stop.  Needless to say, the wrong key autorepeating at the wrong moment could be catastrophic.
• There's the whole silly F-lock business.  By itself, this would just be silly wasted functionality, but when the keyboard forgets its F-lock state, it defaults to the alternate key meanings.
• And then there's the key cap life issue.  A Natural 4000's key cap legends — which appear to be just printed decals, and exceptionally thin ones at that — begin to wear away within a few months of normal use, and by six months many of them will be completely blank.

My first Natural Keyboard 4000 was replaced under warranty by Microsoft at five months' age.  (It carries a three year warranty.)  Within four months of replacement, the replacement had the same problem.  I'm guessing Microsoft replaced a LOT of Natural Keyboard 4000s with worn-blank key caps, and decided it was costing them too much money.

You see, they've now solved the problem with a brilliantly simple strategy.  What's more, this solution automatically extends to all existing keyboards already sold!  Astounding!

The solution?

They have simply defined the Natural Keyboard 4000's absurdly short key cap life to be "normal wear".  Thus it is no longer covered under the warranty.

I suppose this is to be expected from Microsoft.  It's not like they don't already have a history of making their shoddy products become their customer's problem.  But this is more blatant than usual; they have basically just declared an endemic problem with one of their products to be not a problem, in order to avoid having to honor their warranty on the product.

Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft, before warranting this keyboard for three years, you should have done some actual wear testing on it to see whether or not it would actually stand up to three years of use.  Or one.  Or even six months.  But now that you've put it out on the market with a three-year warranty, the least you could do is suck it up and honor your warranty.  Or, god forbid, have your hardware OEM actually fix the problem.

But it's easier to just let your name become still more tarnished, isn't it?

Comments

[otherbill.livejournal.com]

At work, I have a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Elite, complete with a gel wristpad that is curved to match the keyboard's funky shape. It's been rock-solid for years, and the key caps are only just now starting to wear off.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I have three or four other MS keyboards still around (one Natural Elite and two or three Natural Pros), and none of them — or any of the Sun, Apple, Keytronic, or Dell keyboards — has a key cap wear problem. Some of these keyboards are fifteen years old.

I have two Natural 4000s, and both of them wore mostly blank in a matter of months.

This is clearly an aberration that's far beyond any reasonable standard of normal wear, but Microsoft has decided it's cheaper to piss their customers off than to cop to it and fix the problem.