I was at the company store yesterday, and noticed the new Microsoft Fingerprint Reader, which was cheap enough to be an impulse buy. Then I noticed the wireless mouse/reader combo for not much more, and went with that instead. It was time for me to get a wireless mouse anyhow.

Installation was a snap (the usual "install the software, then plug in the USB cable"), and I was up and running.

Here's how it mostly commonly works: After the scanner recognizes you, it autofills in a web page's login fields and presses the login button. Thus, using it with a password protected site goes like this:

• Put fingerprint on scanner
• Software pops up a list of your password protected sites
• Select the desired site
• Boom, you're logged into the site.

To add a site to the scanner's database, you first navigate to the page, then put your finger on the scanner. The software recognizes that you're at a login page and pops up a dialog with fields names where you enter whatever login info is necessary. The software makes a best guess as to what fields are important, but you an easily customize the fields. In my experience, the software did a decent but not great job of guess the right fields.

All in all, it's pretty cool. Highly recommended.