So this guy made a stop-motion video on his desk, recreating famous 8-bit games with bits of construction paper and produce. I heard about this video for the better part of a day, and thought “Meh, that’s probably cute,” before I actually sat and watched it. It is so much better than I imagined, and if you love classic NES gaming, you must watch it, and watch it all the way through, because each segment is better and cleverer than the last.
May 27, 2010
May 8, 2010
Review: Razer Sphex Mousepad
I’ve had this mousepad a really long time, and never got around to reviewing it. Which is probably the better way to write a review, after you’ve had a product for like a year, and actually have experienced it in many different situations.
The concept of the Sphex is that it’s really, really thin. It’s about the thickness of a piece of paper. After much scientific study with my fingertip, I have determined it’s actually the thickness of two pieces of paper, but I buy cheap paper. If you have some real quality stock of paper, it might be just one. The point is, it’s so thin as to be almost imperceptible on your desk. The other very nice feature is that Razer has priced it very well. It’s only $14.99, which for a gaming-grade mousing surface is about as cheap as they come. Knowing Razer’s penchant for making high-quality gaming devices, but with prices that reflect their quality, when I first read about it I figured it had to be at least $30. I was very impressed that they made it so affordable.
It’s Thin
There are several advantages to how thin it is. It feels a lot less constricting when playing, because the edges of the pad don’t get in the way of your hand. The pad is relatively small for a gaming pad, but I don’t use really big hand motions so it’s fine for me. I also love it because I tend to move things around on my desk, while working and while playing. Sometimes I want to put my laptop down on it, or overlap my keyboard on top of it. Definitely when gaming, I sometimes need to place my joystick and throttle on the portion of the desk normally reserved for the mouse. In all of these situations, I can place anything over it without creating an unstable surface because it’s so thin. It’s more like a differently-texture section of the desk, rather than a separate object. Right now while typing on my laptop, my left forearm is resting on the corner of it. With a regular mousepad that would be annoying, and I’d need to shove it out of the way, but I don’t even notice it.
Being a Razer product, naturally it’s fine-tuned for gaming, and the surface is made of the proper texture to provide good tracking for optical and laser mice. The texture thing can be a personal preference. Some people like their mousing surface really smooth for quick movements, some people like more control, so a more pitted surface that slows down the mouse but allows the sensor to more accurately track its position is better. And then there are those who like soft cloth mats for lots of control, but this is not that. It definitely feels like a hard mat, and leans a little more to the “control” type of texture, which I like.
Because it’s so thin, there’s no room for rubber or anything to keep it in place, so the entire mat is covered in a gentle adhesive. It arrives with a plastic backing which peels away. There’s a little tab on the side of the mat that is not sticky, so you can peel it up easily to move it. The adhesive is not too strong, just enough to keep it from going anywhere when pressed onto your desktop, and is intended to be reusable.
Here is a picture of the Sphex vs. a piece of paper:
Portability
I always tour with a mousepad. First of all, I’m just that kind of gamer. I’m aware of the impact my mousing surface has on my gaming, and I want my favorite surface with me all the time. Also, in a hotel you never know what kind of desk you’re going to get from day to day. It might be something really inappropriate, like glass, in which case you’ll probably wind up mousing on top of a brochure about historic Chattanooga or something.
Speaking of Chattanooga, I found this picture that I inexplicably snapped there, of my laptop set up for gaming. The table wasn’t even the kind of work-friendly desk hotels usually give you. It was just a round table, that tapered off quickly outside the photo frame. In this case I am demonstrating how handy it is to be able to overlap your computer (or keyboard, in the case of a desktop) with the mouse pad when working in tight quarters. Incidentally, it also demonstrates why I’m so glad my new Macbook Pro has both USB ports on the left.
But mostly, the main reason I always bring a mousepad is to protect the mouse, which is the real investment. A $125 mouse that’s treated like a $20 mouse will start to perform like a $20 mouse when it gets all scratched up or used on a dirty surface. So I always make sure before I use the mouse that the mouse pad is perfectly clean and smooth, and nothing that can cause damage (food and drinks, objects that could scratch it) is ever put on the mouse pad.
Using a mouse pad also protects the surface from getting scratched by the mouse (which is sort of like saying that not keying a Ferrari protects the keys from getting paint on them), but especially with heavy gaming, it’s good for your furniture, and respectful of other people’s furniture if you’re in a hotel, dorm room, or any other place that’s not yours.
I both love and hate touring with this mat. First of all, I love it because it’s so light. For the purposes of packing, its weight is completely negligible. My previous mat was backed in aluminum, which added a little bit of weight and rigidity to the packing of my backpack. It wasn’t a huge problem, but replacing it with something weightless and flexible was a big improvement. Obviously this is a precision surface and you don’t want to pack it somewhere where it will get crushed or bent, but it has a little bit of give to it, and that’s helpful sometimes. I usually pack it in the section of my bag intended for papers and stuff — most laptop bags have a file-holder divider for this purpose. I’ve usually got a few papers in there (pay stubs, hotel receipts, schedules), and will pack the Sphex between these papers so it’s got a little protection against anything that might rub against it in the bag.
The one drawback for touring is the need to use the adhesive. I kept the plastic backing around because I knew this mat would need to move a lot. So whenever I travel with it, I try to make sure both sides are free of debris, and then carefully align the plastic with the back so all the sticky parts are covered. After many travels, the adhesive loses a lot of its stickiness. I notice it mostly in the fact that the plastic will no longer stick to all of it. If you look closely in the photos above you can see places where it’s lifting off the desk a tiny bit. There’s still enough adhesive on the mat to keep it from sliding around, but there are regions of it that have become worn down, either because the adhesive came off on the surface it was on, or it has attracted some dirt. I should mention that occasionally it will leave a some residue on a desk, which can be cleaned off, but on my home desk sometimes that takes a lot of effort.
However, there is one way to help this problem, in that the mat is designed to be washable. Yes, you can wash it with water and a little soap, and it will clear the dirt off the adhesive side, but I find that it doesn’t go back to being as sticky as when it was new. I figure that’s probably a result of some of the adhesive actually coming off, rather than being covered in dirt.
Longevity
My recommendation on moving around with it is that it is definitely reusable, and would be perfectly fine for moving a couple times a year, but if it’s your job to be in a different city every day, or you go to LAN parties where your rig is constantly being set up somewhere new, you might get frustrated by it. However, if the prospect of gaming on such a thin surface seems really exciting to you, it might be worth it. Also, the price is low enough that if you really care so much about your gaming experience, it’s not going to break the bank if you have to replace it eventually.
Actually, if I was really going to be thorough, it would be a good idea to have one that stays at home in perfect condition, and one for travel. Any bumps on a mousing surface — either on the mouse skates or the pad — create jittery movement for your game, and a tiny particle of dirt stuck under the pad could create a noticeable bump when playing. I always do my best when re-applying the pad to make sure the table is perfectly clean, and there’s nothing stuck to the adhesive, but the more it moves the more chances there are for imperfections.
Summary
Overall this purchase is one I am completely happy with. The only drawbacks to it are a result of my lifestyle not really being suited for the way the mat works, and even then it works pretty well. I’m not sure if I could ever deal with a mouse pad getting in my way again. It’s got all the advantages of mousing directly on your desk, but with the advantages of using a mouse pad as well: you won’t damage your desk or your mouse, and you have a surface designed to help your mouse track better.
April 3, 2010
Son-of-a-Bitch: The PC Edition
So you know, I’m home on vacation for five lovely days.
What’s the one thing I want to do on the rare occasions that I’m home? Why, play on my gaming PC, of course. It’s big and heavy and can’t go anywhere, but I’ve put a lot of money into it over the years, and sometimes I’d like to play it a little before it’s obsolete.
Well when I got home, I noticed that it was making a strange sound. It sounded to me like there was something wrong with one of the fans in the back. Upon further investigation, I realized the noise was coming out of the power supply. This got me nervous.
First of all, the PSU is one of the only original parts from when I first built it in January of 2005. I was going to replace it at the same time as the motherboard, CPU, video card, and RAM, back in 2008, but I ran out of money. It’s a 600W, which was really good at the time it was new, and when I discovered it could just barely run the more power-hungry components I was adding, I decided to stick with it until I had more time and money for an upgrade.
Sometimes it does weird things. Sometimes when the computer is off, the lights on my joystick and headset flicker. Sometimes all the case lights don’t come on. A lot of times, the light on the power button doesn’t come on. Sometimes peripherals would light up when the computer was off when they never have before. There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it.
My basic assessment of it has been, “yeah it’s sketchy, and I’d feel better with a PSU that’s really designed to handle newer parts.” But I’ve been on the road ever since the upgrade in 2008, and naturally I haven’t felt it was wise to invest in any upgrades since then, since computer parts lose their value so quickly.
So today I started to really worry about the noise. It rises and falls with the activity level of the PC (i.e. it starts or gets louder when opening or saving large files). I did some research online, and it seems like it’s fairly common in old or cheap PSUs. Something to do with the transistors getting loose. Apparently it’s not a sign that your PSU is going to explode, although the general consensus seems to be that it’s a good sign you should get a new one.
There’s also the strange fact that my TrackIR receiver for some reason stopped working while I was gone (like has no reaction at all to being plugged in, like it’s totally dead). It was one of the things that would light up for no reason when the PC was off. The other strange new behavior is that the computer will not turn on right after the switch on the back of the PSU is turned on. Based on the flickering of the lights on my peripherals (which luckily pretty much all have lights), I can see that it’s as if it’s summoning up the power to turn on over the course of a minute or so. First my headphones will flicker, then get stronger, and finally light up fully, then one side of my X52 joystick, then the other, then once both of those are lit, or at least starting to flicker, then the power button will actually succeed in turning on the computer. Scaaaary!
Oh, and also when saving the BIOS settings, instead of a restart, the computer suddenly shuts down, and again has to go through this building up of power before it will turn on.
I am beginning to seriously worry about what this unstable power might be doing to my peripherals, and if it has indeed killed my TrackIR, I don’t want to lose anything else!
While the expense of a new PSU is an inconvenience, if the damn thing does blow up in the next day-and-a-half, I can’t replace the whole computer. So as much as I want to play while I’m home, the fact is, ordering a $100 part from Newegg after the tour is over is the smarter thing to do, rather than trying to squeeze a few hours of fun out of it and frying $2000 worth of parts that I wouldn’t be able to replace for years. It would all be over — that’s it, kaput — gaming on a Macbook Pro till the end of time.
Speaking of which, those new Macbook Pros rumored to have the i7 chips still aren’t out yet. Mine is behaving lately, so I’m actually OK with the delay. I really still love this machine, although on this last leg of the tour I had some more time for gaming, and couldn’t help thinking how much better it would be with a faster CPU and more video memory.
Anyway, perhaps this unfortunate situation will cause me to spend a little less time gaming, and more time doing productive projects, like working on the database, and some expansions of the site that I’ve had in mind.
March 27, 2010
So Much Interwebs I Want to Cry
We have been rehearsing and loading in on the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Yesterday in the rehearsal room we discovered that not only is the interwebs fast, it’s like insanely, inconceivably fast. This score above isn’t even as high as what we got yesterday. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much bandwidth in my life. I don’t know what I would do with it.
I have been excited that our hotel (the Chattanooga Choo Choo) has occasional speeds over 1mbps, which is enough for gaming, and enough to make you doubly pissed when it inexplicably craps out in the middle of your gaming session.
And here we are, with more bandwidth than we have at home through the lowly cables of Time Warner, and we’re at work. Not necessarily work-ing, mind you, but it’s really hard to have a full gaming session with mouse, headset, gamepad and such when everybody else is working.
When I was in college we had dial-up. I don’t want to go back to college, I just wish I even had the option to have this much interwebs in my home.
Most of all, I’m really sick of hotels providing such crappy bandwidth, on purpose. Of course universities get tuition from their students to pay for such services, but their housing fees aren’t the equivalent of $100 per night per student. Why do I pay $100 per night in a hotel and get dial-up speeds? And my favorite is the hotels that provide crap bandwidth for free and then charge for more. Like it really costs them $12/day to provide one guest with bandwidth that you’d still say sucked if it was in your house. It’s like if warm water was free and you had to pay extra for every day you wanted hot water in your shower. Come to think of it, I hope no hotel owners are reading this, because they’d probably do it. And is the hospitality business so inherently unprofitable that buying a TV package that includes the History Channel would put half of them out of business? Apparently so.
Assholes.
Honestly, I don’t mind frequently working 18 hours a day. I don’t mind being away from friends and family for months at a time. I don’t even really mind being away from my stuff. Hotel internet is what makes touring suck.
November 26, 2009
Rorscharch Test
What does this look like to you?
If you said Luigi driving a Model T, you may be an 80s gamer.
What is it really?
It’s the desktop icon of a PDF with all the plans for Romeo and Juliet. By default on a Mac the icon is a miniaturized version of whatever the front page of the document is.
So is our production set in the Mushroom Kingdom in the early 1900s?
Well no, now that you mention it, I’m kind of disappointed that it’s not.
Here’s a bigger version of how that image got to look like Luigi behind the wheel of a car:
It’s been driving me crazy all day. I keep wondering what that icon on my desktop that so clearly is Luigi driving a car is doing there, when I’m trying to keep only things work-related in front of me. Finally I looked at it and actually realized that what I’m looking at is the Guthrie’s McGuire stage and our set being scaled down to approximately 1/1680th of its actual size.
(disclaimer: I suck at math. I really suck at math. And I don’t have the scale drawings with me).
November 9, 2009
Razer Megalodon Review
I had been saving up for months so that I could get this headset before going back on the road. Why, you ask? Well for one thing, my surround headset of choice, the Medusa, was a 5.1 surround headset with analog connections — meaning it plugs into the audio out ports of your sound card, or for that matter, any regular audio equipment that accepts stereo mini plugs. I liked this option at the time because it’s compatible with all audio equipment and allows your sound card to do the heavy lifting, which is what it’s there for, after all. The other option, which the Medusa also offers, is to get it with a USB connector, in which case your computer has to figure out how the surround sounds should be sent out to your hardware, creating extra processing work. And of course, you can’t plug a USB connector into your stereo or TV. At least you couldn’t back then, what do I know about these newfangled TVs and stereos?
Then something happened that changed my mind: I started spending way more time away from home than at home, and suddenly my big fancy gaming PC was collecting dust, and I had to cobble together a way to make my laptop satisfying for gaming long-term.
My immediate solution was to connect the Medusa with its analog connections as a stereo headset to my Macbook Pro. First of all, you immediately lose the point of having such a nice headset, because the laptop (or most laptops for that matter) don’t support analog surround sound. So it’s just a really expensive stereo headset with a mic. Oh, and about the mic — the Macbook Pro’s audio-in jack is line-level, it doesn’t support unpowered mics, so you need Griffin’s iMic USB adapter or something similar. It’s a lot of crap to carry around, with no better performance than a cheap $15 USB headset from Radio Shack.
So this past summer, I bought a cheap $15 Radio Shack headset, just to carry to the theatre, and laughed when the guys I play online with said I sounded much better than on my old ($125) headset.
But the true problem I was having with life on the road was the lack of surround sound. The game I play, Battleground Europe, is very audio-dependent if you want to survive for long as infantry, and playing in stereo basically means spinning in circles to figure out where a sound is coming from based on where it sounds loudest. The way I was used to playing is that I could hear a single rifle shot and know if it was friendly or enemy, almost an exact direction, and an approximate distance. With one shot I would know exactly where the enemy was, and could turn right to him and shoot back, or move quickly to flank around him if he wasn’t visible. With stereo headphones that’s not possible at all. So I realized that the circumstances of my life required that I would need a USB headset if I ever hoped to play with surround.
It was around this time that Razer released the Megalodon — a 7.1 surround headset, powered by USB, and featuring a nice control box that allows you to adjust volume and a number of other features with just a few buttons.
I saved up all summer, and purchased it in the fall to prepare for going on the road. And now I’ve used it enough to answer all your burning questions.
Wait – first of all, what is a Megalodon?
Razer likes to name their products after fearsome animals. Sort of like how the Navy names different classes of ships after states, presidents, etc., Razer also has naming conventions. Mice are always snakes, for instance (see my review of the Mamba). Well headsets are… fish. Usually bad-ass fish. Cause nobody wants to brag about how they’re gonna frag your ass with their Goldfish.
The megalodon is a shark (thank you, Wikipedia). As you might have guessed from the name, which sounds kind of like it means “big-ass dinosaur,” it’s a prehistoric shark, a friggin’ huge prehistoric shark, which is estimated to have been up to 56ft in length.
Here’s a dude sitting in one’s mouth. RAAAAWWRR!!
Are you gonna review this thing or not?
Hold your horses, you’re gonna get some educatin’ with your gaming peripheral review. OK, now I’m ready.
Setup
The Megalodon connects to your computer with a simple USB plug. According to the specs it does not require USB 2.0, but a powered USB port is recommended. I tried it in my keyboard USB port (which is USB 1.1 and connected through a hub), and it was none too happy.
You don’t have to install any drivers, they are built into the control box and will automatically configure whatever computer you plug it into. Nice, huh?
Because the headphones are USB, they don’t require a sound card, which is good if you’ve got crappy sound in your rig or laptop, or bad if you’ve got a really expensive sound card waiting to be used.
The Control Box
About four feet down the braided-fiber-covered cable from the headset is the control box, which looks kind of like an iPod that’s been attacked by a gaming device. It has a scroll wheel (which actually turns like ye olde iPode, it’s not touch-sensitive). In the center is the Select button, with a nice light-up Razer logo on it.
On the left side is a volume meter which indicates different things depending on what mode it’s in, but usually it’s just your plain old volume.
At the top is a button that says Maelstrom. That’s Razer’s name for the technology that processes the 7.1 surround sound. You can push that button to toggle between 2.0 (stereo) and 7.1 mode, and the appropriate number will light up in blue on the left or right of the button. It will also cause the speaker icons around the box to light up, to show all seven speakers, or just the two at the top. Razer recommends listening to stereo sources in 2.0 mode, because the Maelstrom engine is apparently not helpful unless your source is 5.1 or 7.1 surround, and will just make it sound kind of funny.
There are three buttons on the bottom of the scroll wheel, all of which are mic-related:
- Mic mute — mutes the mic, of course, and also lights up red when activated, so hopefully you’ll notice that you’re muted and not talk to yourself for 10 minutes like one of my squad leaders is fond of doing
- Mic sens — while this button is pressed you can use the scroll wheel to adjust the mic’s sensitivity (shown on the volume meter)
- Mic level — adjusts the volume of your mic’s output
The nice thing about these features is that when they are activated you can hear yourself in the earphones, so you can check right away how it sounds (in the business this is called sidetone, which is one of those terms that makes me feel really smart when I use it to explain what’s wrong with my comm).
Other Features
If you press the center button it will highlight each set of speakers on the control box and let you adjust their relative levels. You can’t independently set levels for left and right, only for each type: center, front, middle, rear, and bass.
There’s also a hidden, undocumented setting where you hold something while pressing something else. I can’t remember what it does, though. But when I find it I’ll add it.
These are all you get — there is no software to install, which also means no control over the finer points of your audio experience. They plug in and they work. I find that really great for being on the road, but it’s a little unnerving as a PC gamer geek. However, I have never felt a strong desire to tinker with the settings, which is more than I can say for the Medusa, which was mostly a product of my sound card (SB Audigy 2ZS) flipping the hell out every time I changed video drivers.
The Hardware
The main difference between these headphones and the Medusa (well basically between the Medusa and any other gaming headphones I know of) is that the Medusa creates surround sound by actually having three separate speakers in each earpiece. Most other headsets use software to figure out how to balance each sound to trick your ear into perceiving its correct direction. I thought the Medusas were pretty amazing, but the Megalodon does a nice job of indicating direction, too.
The first thing I really like about these, especially for travel purposes, is that they’re very light. They look just as bulky, but the materials are very lightweight. If you have an unruly child, or perhaps just like slamming your headset on your desk when you get killed in particularly inglorious fashion, I’d wager they won’t hold up nearly as well. But if you can be a civilized gamer, the build quality seems good, if a little more delicate.
The mic is a single piece of plastic, it doesn’t bend into position. It has a little bit of flexibility in the middle, though I don’t think that allows you to keep the shape you want, it just bends enough so it doesn’t snap accidentally. My professional feeling on headset mic booms, if you really want to know, is that I prefer the ones you can bend into any shape… until they get worn out and won’t stay where you put them. The nice thing about the solid ones is that when you put them somewhere, you can trust that they’re still there the next time you have to call a cue. And I feel the same way about gaming headsets.
The headset seems to shrink down to a pretty small size for an adult head, and expands quite a bit. I don’t know how it would do with a little kid, as thankfully I don’t have any kids here to test with, so I think you’ll have to look elsewhere for opinions if you’re a really cool and/or crazy parent to buy your small child a $150 headset.
The velvet ear pads are very comfortable. The headphones don’t block out outside noise particularly well, but that’s not always a bad thing.
Accessories
One of the coolest things about this headset, that caught me completely by surprise when I opened it, is the carrying case it comes with. It has a semi-hard shell, molded to fit the headset and control box on the inside, which closes with a zipper, clam-shell style. If you stomped on it, bad things might happen, but it will definitely keep your headset safe in most travel situations, and like the headset itself, is surprisingly lightweight, so there’s no reason not to use it. I can’t wait to go on the road with this thing. I will feel better about traveling with my expensive headset, and will know that the cord won’t be getting all tangled up in my pajamas. Getting pajamas at gametime or headset at bedtime is not productive. It’s going to be a very clear distinction from now on.
My rough scientific analysis which consisted of me stepping on a scale both holding and not-holding the case with headset in it puts its total weight at 1.5lbs. I’ve probably told you I obsess over the weight of my suitcase, so this is very good news. Incidentally, the Medusa weighs 1lb, without a case or control box.
Does it work with Mac?
Razer’s official answer on this is kind of, “um, maybe, we think, but we’re not sure.” What I can tell you is that you can definitely plug them in and listen to regular audio with them (you have to select them in your audio settings to make the headphones and mic the active input and output). I don’t have any surround games to play with on the Mac end right now, but on listening to a few minutes of a 5.1 DVD, it certainly sounded like it was working. Which pretty much convinced me that that’s the only way I can ever listen to a DVD on my Mac again.
Does it work with TrackIR’s TrackClip Pro?
Yes. The TrackClip Pro clips rather nicely to the headband, as shown here.
Summary
Pros
- light weight
- simple, literally plug-and-play setup
- awesome carrying case
- comfortable fit
- no soundcard required
- easy access to volume and mic settings
- shape is compatible with TrackIR TrackClip Pro
Cons
- no detailed software configuration possible
- control box adds bulk compared to simpler alternatives
- I wish there was a simple audio out jack on the control box so I could plug in external speakers or otherwise get sound out besides using the headphones.
- not compatible with standard audio equipment, or console gaming systems
Overall I’m very happy with it. There’s not much to play with, but I think especially on the road that will be very good. I don’t have a lot of time to play, and if I’m in a hotel at all it’s generally a new one every night. Being able to take the headset out of the bag and plug it in without worrying any more about it for the rest of the night is just what I need.
Alternatives
If the lack of software controls bothers you, there is also the Logitech G35 7.1 headset which has its own control panel and apparently some nice features. Before you get all excited, I will leave you with a picture of what it looks like:
August 11, 2009
15″ Macbook Pro Now Available with Matte Screen Again!
A followup to this post, in which I debate whether I can handle buying a 17″ Macbook Pro, partially as a result of the fact that it was (until today) the only Mac laptop still offered with a matte screen.
Well today I read on TUAW that the 15″ is now being sold with a matte option again.
This is good, since if I decide the 17″ is just too big, I have options. On the other hand, if you look at the other post you will see that although the screen was the dealbreaker, there were other reasons I was still considering the 17″, mostly related to the idea of having a more desktop-like experience while living on the road.
That being said, I have lived my entire professional life with a 15″ Mac laptop, and have rarely used a larger computer or external monitor for work purposes, even when living at home. Of course a larger screen would be nice, but it has never been necessary, and the balance of the 15′s size being large enough to work on for long periods, but small enough to walk around with makes it possibly the ideal form factor.
I could use a larger screen and higher resolution for seeing more of a spreadsheet on one page, coding my website with code on one side and a larger preview on the other, those are legitimate purposes, but the main reason I felt I needed a larger screen was for gaming on the road. I was starting to get a bit of cabin fever gaming in 15 inches for a year on end, and getting ready to go back for at least six months more of that.
Gaming isn’t necessary, but it also is part of my life that I enjoy and I think it is a professional concern, as there have been times when circumstances have prevented me from enjoying certain activities that are normally part of my lifestyle, such as listening to music on my commute, having alone time in the car at Reagle, and when these things are taken away they start to affect the delicate balance that keeps me sane and calm. Somehow I have found a way to enjoy doing a job that most people refuse to do because it’s too stressful, and my continued ability to do my job well requires that I take care of my mental health and give myself opportunities to unwind so that I can go to work happy and with a positive attitude that will filter down to the rest of the people on the production.
I don’t know if an inch-and-a-half of additional screen real estate will make the difference, but if so, the ultimate benefit is that I would not resent my job for taking me away from things that I enjoy, and on a day-to-day basis, I think that’s a huge deal.
On the other hand, I have to consider how much the size of the laptop will negatively affect my work and free time. On the road I find myself actually using it on my lap — or balanced precariously on something else — a lot more often, since I’m often in improvised situations where I have to make a desk out of what’s available, and I will probably be writing the show report from a couch, either at the venue or on the bus.
I looked into how much Tekserve charges for Macbook Pro rentals, and it’s $100 per day, or $200 per week (and upwards from there). As much as I’d love to have an opportunity to run around with a 17″ for a while before dropping $2,500 on it, I don’t think it’s worth nearly 10% of the total cost to have just a week to decide if I like it.
Anyway, the decision is still far away (I hope), but I need to keep paying attention to all the ways I use my computer during the day, and how many of them would be impractical with a larger machine.
August 7, 2009
May 30, 2009
Razer Mamba Review
My birthday present to myself was the brand new Razer Mamba wireless mouse. Â How new? Â Well actually I don’t know, because last I heard it was supposed to come out on May 18, and then on like May 3rd I went to the website to see about preordering it, and there it was, “in stock.” Â I feel like Razer sends me a promotional email on pretty much a daily basis about some headphones or keyboard or some crap, and yet they never actually bothered to advertise via email or on the front page of their website that pretty much their biggest product release ever was now available for purchase? Â Razer mice aren’t always carried in stores, but I did find it on Amazon, which is where I purchased it, since I have an Amazon credit card and some gift certificates to spend on it.
First of all it should be said that the mouse costs $129. Â If you can’t see the value of spending that much on a mouse, you can stop reading now if you like, or continue reading for fun if you want, but I understand there are only a certain percentage of people for whom this product is intended. Â Those are probably the same people who have a keyboard worth $129, a joystick worth $129, and a set of rudder pedals worth $129. Â At that point, why should the mouse — the primary way to interact with most games — be given any less attention?
The big deal about this mouse is that it’s the first time that Razer has released a wireless mouse. Â Being the dedicated gaming hardware company that they are, they didn’t believe any wireless mouse could stand up to the needs of serious gaming, so they simply chose not to make one until they thought they could do it right. Â So it was with much fanfare that they announced some months back that they thought they had finally come up with something worth doing.
Despite the enormous potential for it to be a disaster, I decided that my lifestyle which will have kept me away from all the comforts of home gaming (big monitor, joystick, pedals, TrackIR, surround sound) for basically a full year deserves to be treated to the finest of the one peripheral I actually get to bring with me — the mouse. Â My current mouse of choice was the Razer Deathadder, which is a wired mouse in basically the same shape as the Mamba. Â In addition to being wireless, the Mamba also offers two additional buttons, placed kind of strangely in the upper-left corner of the left mouse button. Â They’re primarily intended to adjust sensitivity on the fly, but can be configured for anything.
One of the coolest things about the Mamba is that it can convert pretty much instantly from wireless to wired mode and back. Â The transmitter has a dock built into it that the mouse can rest on when it’s not being used, and it charges over USB. Â If you’re using the mouse and start to run low on the battery, or simply want the reliable performance of a wired mouse, you can pop the cable out of the transmitter and plug it directly into the mouse, and voila! you have a wired mouse. Â The delay is only the time it takes for Windows to recognize a mouse being unplugged and then plugged in. Â I have found that sometimes it seems to take a little longer for the connection to become stable when switching to wireless, but it’s still about 30 seconds. Â I wouldn’t recommend doing it in the middle of a firefight, but it’s easy to do during a quick break from action.
Here are a couple shots that illustrate how the cable is removed:
On the underside of the mouse are a few buttons. The latch on the upper-right is the release for the USB cable. On the lower right is the pairing button. I don’t find it generally necessary, but there’s one on the mouse, and one on the transmitter — I guess for when they get confused, or perhaps on a new install. And on the left side is the power switch for the mouse — it’s turned on for wireless mode, and off when charging or when wired.
The two little gold dots are the charging connectors. Â The mouse docks on the transmitter, kind of like a pedestal, like so:
Of course if you’d rather play than stare at your beautiful mouse, you can just use it wired, and it will charge as you continue playing.
Mamba vs. Deathadder
As you can see in the photos, they are really pretty much the same size. The changes are very subtle, and from what I can tell, all seem to be good adjustments.
I’ve found the adjustment from the Deathadder to be pretty seamless. Â The Mamba is a bit heavier because of the battery, but the teflon feet are much smoother, so I don’t notice the weight. Â I’m also not the kind of gamer who really has to lift the mouse that often, so it’s not a big thing for me. Â Another small difference is in the area of the side buttons. Â The buttons themselves have a thin layer of rubber on them, which feels nice, and there is a more generous rubber area below the buttons, which makes it a nice comfortable place to rest your thumb when you don’t want to hit the buttons accidentally. Â There’s also a very slight lip towards the back of the mouse which gives a little more grip and control in the thumb area, especially if you need to lift the mouse a lot. Â The cord, should you choose to use it, is woven, not rubber like the Deathadder. Â A lot of people prefer that because it moves a little more freely.
Aesthetics
Any gaming gear strives to be both functional and sexy.  The Mamba has the standard blue LED style going.  Some people think blue is too cliché, but I don’t mind since it happens to match the lighting on my keyboard and joystick.  The Mamba has less lighting than the Deathadder — just two narrow strips of blue on the mousewheel.  However, the charger/transmitter has blue lighting on the bottom, and around the button on the front of it.
Another good thing is that like most of Razer’s mice, the settings are saved on the mouse itself so when you plug it in on another computer your keymapping and sensitivity settings travel with you. Â I believe that requires the drivers to be installed on each machine. Â That’s fine with me, since I primarily need it when switching between my home computer and laptop, it’s nice to know that any changes I make to the settings will be up to date when I switch machines.
Rant On
One thing I absolutely hate about Razer is their driver software. Â They packaged this thing like it came right out of the dark side of Cupertino (the packaging would take up a post more complex than this one — feel free to google, I’m sure you’ll find lots of unboxing videos and photos). Â I swear, I have never seen a product packaged this well from Apple. Â And yet their software is absolute crap. Â Look at this mess:
Not only is it ugly, I don’t know what shenanigans they have to do to make the edges do that, but whatever it is is totally non-standard and refuses to pop up when I alt-tab out of a game. Â Like it can’t overlay against a 3D game or something. Â If they had just made it a regular damn window it would be fine! Â There’s a lot of shenanigans going on in their software. Â Like why is it when I plug in my Deathadder on my Mac, before choosing an OS, it goes backwards? Â See most fancy mice, when you plug them in to an unknown computer, the computer’s like, “Oh, that’s a mouse.” Â And then you install the driver and the computer’s like, “Wow, that’s a really fancy mouse!” Â Well with most Razer mice I’ve owned, you plug it in, and the computer’s like “WTF is that?” Â And then it does the hardware detection thing, and slowly gets the idea, and the mouse starts working, and then you install the drivers and it starts working well. Â But right out of the box, it’s not actually a mouse. Â And that pisses me off. Â Every time they release a new product I hope they’ll change all this crap and stop acting like, “Hey look at this cool interface we coded in our dorm room — it has jagged edges,” and act like the professional purveyors of pwnage they otherwise present themselves to be. Â Whoever designed the packaging for the Mamba needs to bitchslap whoever designs their GUI, and get them on the same page. Â Rant off.
Summary
Overall I’m very happy with it. It hasn’t changed my life, but even as a wired mouse it’s a step up from the Deathadder. When gaming I like to have the mouse directly in front of the keyboard, but the wire usually gets in the way when I need to type. This is the biggest change I’ve noticed in usability from being wireless –I only need to worry about where the mouse is, not what the cord is dragging over.
Look – It’s a Game You Can Carry in Your Pocket!
While visiting my parents last week, I ran across this contraption that was rather special to me in my childhood. On one side, it has a chess board with little holes, and these two drawers slide out and there are little teeny tiny chess pieces you can stick in the holes. On the back, there is a circular maze-like game where you have three silver balls and have to tilt the board so that all three balls wind up in the center of the maze. I thought this multi-purpose portable gaming device was the coolest thing in the ’80s.
It was nice to see it again, and I had it just sitting on the table in front of me for a while, and then at some point put my phone down on the table. Eventually I went to get my phone and found these two devices sitting side-by-side. See, 20 years ago, the device on the right was sooo cool, cause it was portable (although you’d need some pretty big pockets!), and you could play two games!
