Let's be honest, if you've looked at the picture above, you're probably thinking the same thing we did when we first saw the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000: it's fairly ugly.

The black and shiny silver plastic combined with its unusual shape results in a rather unsightly looking device. There's logic to the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000's design of course. The ergonomics of it allow your hand to rest comfortably around its girth and use it to navigate your desktop without straining digits.

In fact, we found the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 a pleasure to use and its overall look was by no means a reflection of its comfort and ease of use.

Although setup (involving no more than installing the driver from the disc and plugging in the 2.4GHz USB receiver dongle and inserting the battery Microsoft supplies) was very simple, you can't simply plug in the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 and start work.

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 requires an initial charge of seven hours, while a drained battery needs around an hour's recovery time on the charging plate before it can be used again for more than a brief hiatus.

While charging, a light glows green on the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000's mouse-shaped charging plate.

Left and right buttons on the Laser Mouse work in the same way as on any other mouse, but the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 also features two smaller buttons located where our thumb rested.

These allowed us to go back a step, or to zoom in to the page/document we were viewing.

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000's wheel was smooth and flowed easily. We were also impressed that the software allowed us to assign different actions to each buttons.

As well as being able to assign these as shortcuts to open, save, cut and paste, the programmable hotkeys could be used for program-specific commands and even to change the style and speed of the pointer.

The Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 comes bundled with a charging plate, power cable, USB stick, CD and rechargeable AAA battery.