Re: Hope they truly work
"This has been the case since they first got into the HW business (which is when no-one would make a keyboard with a Windows key on it for them, I beleve)."
You believe wrongly, unfortunately. Microsoft's first hardware product was an expansion card for the Apple II, released in 1980. And even if you restrict it to PC-compatible hardware, their mice date back to before the Windows-key keyboards, and the Mach20 board does as well.