Behold, THE Microsoft Pen

For anybody that doesn't know me personally, I'm the Computer Guy for a smallish company... which got me an invite to the recent Vista Launch event. Since that gave me an opportunity to learn how Vista would make my life better/easier/shinier for years to come (and leave work for half a day), I went. One of the perks was a swag bag full of mostly useless things, but included was THE Microsoft Pen.

I refer to this pen as THE Microsoft Pen because, frankly, it is the perfect Microsoft pen, for reasons I'll detail below... but first, let me describe the basic construction of this pen. The click-button at the top of the pen does not bring out the pen point, but rather turns on a red LED that makes the clear plastic lower bit glow like a little lightsaber-dagger (light-dagger?). To get the pen point, you have to twist the point end of the pen. In order to support the glowy bits, ink storage is reduced to about half the total length of the pen... and, since I dared to unscrew the top cap to see what sort of battery it used, the glow-button is intermittent, needing careful positioning to perform its intended task.

So, why is this pen THE Microsoft Pen? The pretty bits are readily accessible, the useful bits are hidden, some of the useful bits have been pared down to make way for the pretty bits, and the pretty bits misbehave if you push it too far.