hacking the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000

hacking the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000

Posted on September 14th, 2006 Josh Highland 38 comments

Its not a secret that I have "burning wrist hurt disease". My doctor likes to refer to it as carpel tunnel syndrome.

Lately my wrists have been killing me. At work, I have a dell standard style type of keyboard, and a standard dell mouse with a scroll wheel. My index finger on my right hand is shot from the scrolling motion, and my hands are jacked from typing. I needed some thing better. Enter the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000.

After I did a little research I decided that the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000 was for me. The interesting thing about the keyboard is that it has a "zoom slider". The zoom slider is a cool idea but executed poorly. Who wants a "zoom" slider to change the font size of the screen?

It would be so much better if it was a slider for scrolling. I hit the web and found out there was a hack to do just this over at pain in the tech. In a few steps I was able to change the zoom slider into a scroll slider.

I was happy, but I found that a lot of applications still zoomed in on the text instead of scrolling, like outlook. I decided to hack the commands a bit more, and remove the zoom functionality all together, and replace it with scrolling.

To make things better, Here is a copy of the commands.xml file that I am running, so you can share in my joy also.

To change the zoom into a scroll, using my patched commands.xml file:
1. Navigate to the your Intelitype Pro directory, mine is "C:Program FilesMicrosoft IntelliType Pro"
2. Rename the existing commands.xml to commands.xml_OLD
3. Place the new commands.xml into that directory
4. Reboot the computer
With the scroll hack in place, I can scroll a window without having to take my hands off the keyboard. Thanks Miscrosoft for making a sweet keyboard, but no thanks for not making it a scroll slider in the first place. A zoom slider is just a stupid idea.
hack, hardware, mod

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38 responses to “hacking the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000”
1. linuxgoober September 30th, 2006 at 16:50
  
  Many, Many Thanks!!
2. Josh Highland October 3rd, 2006 at 18:39
  
  IMO: this keyboard is 1000x better once that scroll hack is applied.
3. bob October 5th, 2006 at 22:16
  
  hey man,
  
  Thanks alot for this great hack.
  
  I just bought this keyboard and was surprised by the uselessness of the zoom wheel.
  
  Thanks to your hack, this keyboard is ten times better.
  
  Scroll wheel, sheesh, what were they thinking!
4. foundationiv October 16th, 2006 at 10:28
  
  Thanks a ton, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for, if you have any other hacks for this great keyboard – hit me!
5. Steve Smith May 5th, 2007 at 18:55
  
  Has anyone figured out how to change the keyes at the top (e.g., favorites, search, mail…) to NOT launch programs, but for text macros? It would really come in handy for games.
  
  Steve Smith
6. Jason’s Weblog » Review of Microsoft’s Natural Keyboard 4000 May 26th, 2007 at 11:25
  
  [...] story to digg, it brought up other stories related to it, and one was about hacking the keyboard to make the zoom a scroller instead. [...]
7. jason May 29th, 2007 at 12:59
  
  the only issue i have is that this commands.xml file doesn’t exist on the mac! i found the .pref files, but they’re encoded somehow… does someone have a solution out there?
8. Bobby July 19th, 2007 at 09:10
  
  thank you thank you thank you, it’s always nice when someone has your hacks done for you
9. Microsoft Keyboard 4000 « Vic-20’s Weblog July 30th, 2007 at 09:14
  
  [...] that the sliding key was intended to be used for zoom — not scroll.Â I used the instructions here to change that functionality. Posted in Uncategorized [...]
10. Barnabas October 17th, 2007 at 08:12
  
  This is absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much.
11. Ryan October 25th, 2007 at 08:11
  
  Does anyone know how to get the spacebar back on if it falls off? I cut off the numpad to give myself more mousing room, but I can’t figure out how the blasted spacebar fits back on! I believe it is different than an old Natural.
12. Josh Highland October 25th, 2007 at 08:17
  
  Ryan… wait, what? you cut off the numpad? like physically cut it off? and the keyboard still works? Please post a link to a picture. I have to see this
13. ShiroX November 12th, 2007 at 08:24
  
  Thanks for providing the hacked file. I tried editing the zoom\scroll lines but it only came up with an error. Works fine now.
14. Gary (aka fool4jesus) November 19th, 2007 at 05:33
  
  Thank you for providing this hack! I could not figure out anything useful the stupid zoom slider did. It didn’t seem to work consistently with applications, and there was no documentation that I could find except Microsoft saying how “intuitive” it was, but not actually telling you what it did!
  
  So, after a year of using the keyboard, does it help your carpal tunnel? I hope so, I just got it and I don’t much like it when my fingers go numb playing the guitar after working on the keyboard (computer keyboard, that is) all day…
15. Josh Highland November 19th, 2007 at 10:05
  
  Yes, this keyboard has helped me SOOOO much. My hands get tired but the pain is gone. This keyboard has also forced me to type more accurately, and hold my hands in a better fashion. I wish it was wireless though.
16. Ryan January 9th, 2008 at 20:25
  
  JOSH! Here is a detailed hack I did of this keyboard to remove the number pad / numpad. It makes it WAY WAY better to mouse next to and it’s easy if you have a Dremel. I invite everyone to look and comment!
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/sawzy/2182423808/
17. Cem Vedat ISIK January 16th, 2008 at 07:12
  
  Gob bless you!
18. blaque February 6th, 2008 at 18:41
  
  no surprise, but works perfectly with the Microsoft Digital Media Pro Keyboard also
19. Brian Donahue March 30th, 2008 at 09:45
  
  Great hack! I’ve had this running for a while… is there anyway to adjust the scroll speed? I often find myself wishing it would scroll faster in Firefox…
20. Josh Highland March 30th, 2008 at 11:23
  
  Brian, Im not sure if there is a control for it. It might be a windows setting to control scroll speed. Check under “mouse” in the control panel
21. Simen Aukland April 1st, 2008 at 09:11
  
  You saved me from the death!
  
  You are a genious!!
22. Leo Gaten May 7th, 2008 at 20:38
  
  Josh:
  
  Just came across your hack. Downloaded it and it works like a charm. I do like the feature of the ZOOM, but use it about 10% of the time compared to the SCROLL feature. How difficult would it be to set up the “commands.xml” file so that the slider is set to SCROLL by default, but by depressing, lets say the CTRL key, you could temporarily shift the slider back to ZOOM?
  
  Thanks,
  Leo
23. Leo Gaten May 7th, 2008 at 20:43
  
  Josh:
  I just tried the CTRL key with the slider and it did what I suggested, i.e., it worked as a ZOOM and when I released it, it went back to SCROLL. It appears you were way ahead of me.
  
  Leo
24. LN June 4th, 2008 at 00:49
  
  stupid MC R&D guys. thx a million!!!!!!
25. o0o July 5th, 2008 at 08:47
  
  2.6.24-19 ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron”
  
  most of the special buttons work except the 5 different favorites, the zoom slider, and of course the win-key.. F-lock mapping is all f-up… some of the buttons can be remapped with control panel gui from default Xfree86 key config..
  
  would like to scroll with the slider.. any ideas?
26. Wilhelm July 9th, 2008 at 01:00
  
  Why didn’t they put a real scroll wheel there in the first place?
27. dan August 21st, 2008 at 01:32
  
  This is exactly what I was looking for. Anyone know how to make this work in Ubuntu, Linux?
28. dan August 21st, 2008 at 02:04
  
  oh, found it:
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2861947&postcount=89
29. me September 18th, 2008 at 07:08
  
  You don’t need to reboot after replacing the .xml file. just kill (from task manager or whatever) itype.exe and then start (run) it again.
30. me September 18th, 2008 at 07:09
  
  oh and I forgot to thank you for the easy mod. Thanks!
31. Alexis October 7th, 2008 at 11:16
  
  This is eight different kinds of awesome. I love this keyboard but have always wanted the zoom slider to scroll instead… Especially as it has always worked wonky for me, using it created a scroll and zoom at the same time (making it twice as worthless). Now it works exactly as I’ve always wanted it to. Bravo!
32. Brock October 21st, 2008 at 12:43
  
  Thank you! This is exactly what this keyboard needed in the first place!
33. BrockLi Soup » Blog Archive » Hacking the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000 October 21st, 2008 at 19:18
  
  [...] for me, I found Josh Highland’s post on the matter. He has a link to download a new version of C:Program FilesMicrosoft IntelliType [...]
34. Mikael le Fou November 22nd, 2008 at 13:03
  
  Great Keyboard ! Big Thank for the Zoom Hack…(Ah Microsoft…)
  
  Better even with my french Dvorak layout (the Bépo)
  
  Mikael
35. Cliff Romine February 7th, 2009 at 17:53
  
  HELP! I hit the Ctrl and Back/Forward key(s) which “flipped” the screen on its’ side, where the “bottom” of the screen is on the left or right side of the monitor. How do I reset this?
36. PHenry February 8th, 2009 at 10:33
  
  Thanks for the inforamtion, I even wrote a blog entry with some additional information. Hope people enjoy.
  
  http://www.pchenry.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/77/Default.aspx
  
  Have a good one!
37. catski March 19th, 2009 at 12:17
  
  Has anyone figured out how to hack the right-click key (the one that should be the right windows button)?
  I can’t identify which line/code in the xml file would change this…..
  Thanks
38. Ujjval April 24th, 2009 at 09:46
  
  Great Hack, I used it for one of my customers with RSI problem and it works like a charm !!! Thanks a million !!! however does any one know how to change the back and the forward buttons to do the horizontal scroll instead of the web page back and forward?
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