Heck, if you take this idea and run with it to its logical conclusion, MS should totally forget about inventing some marginally better mouse with a ‘Start screen’ button on, and take a leaf from Apple’s excellent ‘Marketing for Winners’ playbook:
5. Trash-talk the consumer mouse as “obsolete technology” and “no longer cool”.
6. Boldly pronounce the “Next Big Must-Have” is an ultra low-cost 7″ tablet that magically turns itself into a superpowered trackpad whenever you set it flat (as opposed to vertical) by a desktop keyboard.
7. Profit even more.
Not only could such a device offer Windows PC users an excellent multi-touch trackpad and pen input device that blows their poor old mouse away, its ability to show custom visuals means it could also display a row of user-customizable buttons for switching between apps, displaying a number keypad for math input, and so on.
Sure it’d be more expensive that a standard mouse, but once those users are done slaving for the day they can pop the thing in their pocket for tons of tablety goodness on the way home. As Apple have shown, there’s plenty folks out there happy to throw money at aspirational products as soon as a canny vendor tells them what those aspirations are.
(Plus the obvious attraction of being able to look down at all those poor Mac users with their puny Magic Trackpads for a change.;)