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Has Microsoft taken a page out of the HP stealth marketing play book?

This list has borne traffic regarding Microsoft's Explorer series of optical
mice, which have no moving parts to read the motion of the mouse. I have
gone on record as saying I very much enjoy their Intellimouse trackball for
those rare moments I take my hands off the home row, and had wondered when
or if their would be an optical trackball. I use the trackball at home, and
have small children, so had gotten used to cleaning the trackball almost
immediately after a first attempt to use it. After the Best Buy had been out
of stock for over a month, one day I find a Microsoft Optical Trackball!
Wow! But this model has the trackball on the side and the buttons on top,
opposite of the Intellimouse Trackball, it's ten dollars more, and it looks
like the ball itself comes out all too easily. So I figure that I will visit
http://www.microsoft.com/mouse, and see what I can learn about this new
product. And it's not there, at all, even now. I even searched the web site,
and there is nothing on this product! (insert X-Files theme here) This
product wasn't released, it escaped! Aren't there some children's stories
and at least on cartoon where some mice escape from a lab?

I do need a new trackball, so I later buy a couple for home use. And yes,
the ball does come out too easily to be entrusted to the very young, so now
instead of cleaning it, I have to look under furniture to find it! Even the
manual that comes with it does not mention anything about the trackball, and
I have to reason by analogy to figure out what the two extra buttons do. But
the new version of IntelliPoint (whose product id on installation was all
ones) allows me to correctly identify the product, complete with lovely
graphic that highlights buttons when using the applet. Yet help is lacking
any information that is specific to this product. So I decide to try no
charge personal support, just to ask where if anywhere Microsoft admits that
this product exists. I have to enter a product id. I locate the id on the
bottom of the product, and it ends with five zeroes, which the web site
rejects! Fine, I give up and enter my OS's product id just to get to ask the
question, and in their response they tell me not to do that, and provide me
with a product id to use in the future. I guess I can scratch that into the
plastic, or find a label gun... and they start my ninety days of no charge
support! But I have yet to find any information on this product from
Microsoft. Shhh. It's a secret. Don't tell anyone I told you about this, or
I may never get my Microsoft certification.

I've never heard anyone say that Microsoft does not know how to market a
product, but this could be a first.

Greg Stigers
http://www.cgiusa.com