Typing passwords is no fun, even when they're the simple, wimpy passwords we all use such as the cat's name or the spouse's birthday; when they're real passwords like qb5^KB_1zg, they're even less fun. Letting your Web browser leave cookies on your PC, instead of wiping them after each online session, lets you bypass many sign-in screens, but makes your system less secure.

If you're tired of remembering multiple usernames and passwords -- or if Win XP's Fast User Switching isn't fast enough for all the family members or colleagues who share your PC -- Microsoft offers a shortcut, if not a solution: Shipping later this month, the Optical Desktop with Fingerprint Reader automates system and Web-site logons with the touch of a finger to an oval-shaped scanner at the left edge of the keyboard.

A sci-fi sound effect and blinking LED indicate biometric recognition, which fills in usernames and passwords for you, keystroke-macro-fashion, to whisk you through each online portal with no other input on your part. You know Internet Explorer's AutoComplete recall function for onscreen data entry? This is AutoAutoComplete.

Your ID, Please

The $105 bundle combines a Wireless Optical Mouse 2.0 -- the symmetrical second-best of Microsoft's Tilt Wheel Technology line reviewed a year ago, with horizontal as well as vertical scrolling but without the swoopy right-handed design and side-mounted buttons of the Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer -- with a nonwireless keyboard offering customizable multimedia controls and program-launch buttons as well as the fingerprint reader.

The keyboard and the mouse's radio receiver each plug into a USB port of a Windows XP system (Windows 2000 and earlier versions are excluded); the mouse promises five or six months' life from two AA alkaline batteries (included). After installing the IntelliType Pro keyboard and IntelliPoint mouse drivers, you install fingerprint-recognition software supplied by Digital Persona, which has sold the U.are.U fingerprint reader under its own brand for several years.

A registration wizard helps you enroll your fingerprints for use with the reader; Microsoft suggests you train the device to recognize at least two of your fingers, each scanned four times to create a database entry. The job proceeded without a hitch in our tests.

Once you're up and running, you can touch the sensor anytime to pop up a menu that lets you jump to one of the print-password Web sites you've saved or create a new entry. The dialog box for the latter proved pretty smart about recognizing and presenting username and password prompts -- even if they're not labeled "username" and "password," as in the Amazon.com logon below; you type the entries one last time, and on subsequent visits to the site are prompted by a title-bar icon to touch the reader for express entry. Similar shorthand lets you log onto Windows itself or switch among users.

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