The original Deathadder is Razer’s best mouse in my opinion. It has a great sensor which tracks very well on a lot of surfaces, is capable of tracking at high speeds, has DC and NDC firmwares and has no acceleration or other side effects when set up right.

The Salmosa has received little love from Razer. 1 driver update, no firmware updates and only the default DC firmware available.

Salmosa

So let’s talk a bit first about the thing the new mice have in common, the 3500DPI sensor. It’s not as good as the trusty old 1800DPI sensor used in the Salmosa and Deathadder-new. It has a lot of issues tracking on cloth mousepads, some more than others. Ironically, it’s pretty bad on the Razer Goliathus.  If you like to play on cloth pads, don’t buy an Abyssus or a Deathadder-new.

Deathadder-new

With that out of the way, a bit about the Deathadder-new. It’s pretty much exactly the same as the old one. It has a nicer braided cable, replacing the very thin plastic wire from the old one, which was prone to breaking internally. That’s basically all there is to this new Deathadder. If you have an old one, keep it, if you want a new one, try to find an old one. The changes are not worth the upgrade and extra costs.

Deathadder new, or old?

Abyssus

Compared to the old Salmosa there isn’t much new either, but at least the 3500DPI sensor doesn’t have drift control. The hardware buttons to switch DPI and mouse refresh rate are still there, but the 500Hz option is gone. The scroll wheel is the worst I’ve seen on a Razer mouse. It feels cheap, makes a weird noise and is definitely not as good as the Deathadder or Imperator scroll wheel. Just as with other Razer mice there are a lot of reports of squeaking mouse wheels on the Abyssus.

Abyssus

For some reason I still like the Razer Abyssus. It’s really light and small, easy to throw around. Great for people looking for a finger grip mouse. The buttons are easy to press, I’d rankthem like this (easy -> hard to press): Boomslang CE2007, Abyssus, Deathadder, Imperator

Following the Diamondback was an OK laser mouse, the Copperhead, and the awesome Deathadder, Razer’s first right-handed mouse. It was a great upgrade for gamers looking for the next best thing. The very good Avago 3688 sensor, with 1800DPI and very high maximum speed, guaranteed excellent tracking and is still one of the best sensors available. The familiar ergonomic shape pleased many coming from Logitech’s aging MX5xx line and Microsoft Intellimouse series.

The Deathadder was released over 2 years ago and is still very popular. Recently a newer 3500DPI version was released, which I’ll be reviewing soon as well. (Early verdict: Not as good as the old one.)

Imperator

This review, however, is about the Razer Imperator.

First off the specifications, I’ll save you the Razer marketing speak and stick to the relevant parts, which I’ll discuss in order:

• On-board memory for storing profiles
• 5600DPI sensor, 1000Hz max polling rate, 50g max. acceleration
• Right-handed ‘mx500′ shape
• 7 programmable buttons
• Adjustable thumb-buttons

On board memory

Starting with the Copperhead, Razer equipped most mice with onboard memory. Using this memory you can store specific key bindings and DPI settings directly on the mouse, which allows you plug it in a different computer, without drivers for the mouse, and still enjoy most of the special button binds.

A very important feature for LAN gamers who play tournaments.

Razer really gets this part about gaming mice, and the Imperator does it just as well as the other memory-equipped Razer mice.

Sensor

The Imperator is Razer’s 4th mouse to use a Philips TwinEye laser sensor. The first mouse to use the TwinEye was a disaster (my Razer Lachesis review). The Razer Orichi bluetooth mouse uses the same sensor, but it has newer firmware and is supposedly better. The Razer Mamba has a newer 5600DPI sensor, which is identical to the one used in the Razer Imperator.

The sensor is much better than the one used in the Lachesis, but still suffers from some of the same bugs that plagued the old one (and the Mamba):

Z-axis tracking

The mouse will move diagonally when you pick it up and put it back down again. Like in a game, you’re chasing a target, reposition the mouse, but after putting the mouse down the crosshair is not where you’d expect it to be. It’s just a little bit off.

In the case of the Lachesis, it also meant that clicking the mouse on a soft mousepad would make the cursor move, even though you didn’t move the mouse. The light tilt caused by the press of a button made the cursor move by a few pixels. This problem is still present in the Imperator, but it’s greatly reduced., only when you press the mouse buttons really hard.

Axis lock

Sometimes after repositioning the mouse one of the mouse directions (up-down, left-right) will not work for a split second. Think rocket jumping in Quake or TF2: a quick flick of the wrist, you fire a rocket, and you end up facing some weird way, messing up your jump.

Tracking errors

Laser sensors still have some annoying issues tracking on certain surfaces, especially cloth. This can turn a smooth diagonal movement into a staircase-like line. I’ve encountered no tracking errors on the Razer Exactmat (white) and Razer Destructor (black), but had a few on the Razer Goliathus.  Kinda annoying on the desktop when trying to click a small button.

Shape

Shape-wise it’s obviously inspired (to put it mildly) by the Logitech MX5** series.

If you like the MX500 shape, you’ll like the Razer Imperator. It’s slightly lower, which allows me to use it with palm grip and finger tip grip. Finger tip grip wasn’t comfortable for me on the MX500 shaped Logitech mice.

7 buttons

thumb up, thumb down, left, middle, right, middle up, middle down. 7 well placed buttons. I use 5 of them, because I can’t be bothered to set up the middle up/middle down buttons to do something different than change DPI.

The left and right mouse buttons are slightly harder to press compared to the Diamondback and Deathadder, but not as hard to press as the MX518. The scrollwheel has a nice click when you roll it and is easy to press down.

Adjustable thumb buttons

I considered this to be a stupid gimmick, much like the weights present on mice a few years back, but I actually quite like the adjustable thumb buttons. They allow you to perfectly place the thumb buttons for your hand. So if you use a palm grip, you place them further away from your wrist, and with a finger tip grip you’ll probably move them a bit closer.

Changing the position of the buttons is quick and easy and after moving them the buttons feel just as the normal non-movable buttons.

Conclusion

Playing for a while with the Imperator I’ve come to the conclusion that technically it’s no match for the Deathadder. The Deathadder’s sensor is simply better suited for every surface I’ve tried.
Shape-wise however the Imperator is better for me.

This causes a dilemma, better sensor vs better shape. For now the Imperator’s better shape outweighs the better sensor of the Deathadder, during the coming weeks I’ll try to make a definite decision about which mouse I’ll keep using.

So the ultimate verdict: Would I recommend it?
In its current form, no. Just like the original Deathadder, there are too many issues with tracking.

I hope that, like the Deathadder, future firmware upgrades will fix the issues with the sensor so I can really enjoy this mouse.

Out of my regular group of gaming friends, 8 out of 10 use a Razer mouse. 6 of those are Deathadders, all bought after trying mine on LANs. I wouldn’t recommend them upgrading to the Imperator just yet.
Update:

After some usage, some additional comments:

Axis lockup:

This is a recurring problem and I still haven’t figured out if it’s caused by the way I move the mouse or just a periodic problem. It happens about 3 times per hour during a gaming session. Longest lockup was about half a second, enough to get me killed

Random poweroff:

Haven’t seen this happen during my gaming sessions, but sometimes after leaving the mouse alone for a while, the lights are off, scrollwheel doesn’t glow and the cursor won’t move. Buttons still work and a few seconds after clicking, the mouse will come back to life. Weird.

It’s an Android based phone so it’s easy to customize and there are a lot of great apps available for it.

However, HTC’s default firmware is a bit sluggish. Luckily there’s a solution. It takes 5 minutes and besides speeding it up, it also ‘roots’ it. ‘Rooting’ an Android phone allows a user to do basically anything he wants with the phone.

Here are the steps (by Paul of MoDaCo)

- Download the custom ROM, and copy it to your SD card (modaco 2.2 core)
- download this file (http://content.modaco.net…copatchedrecovery-1.0.zip) and extract it to your PC or mac
- open a command prompt to the directory containing the extracted files
- type the following commands (prefix each command with ./ if you’re on a mac)
- adb shell reboot bootloader (wait for device to reboot into bootloader)
- fastboot boot cm-hero-recovery.img
- Select ‘nandroid backup’ from the menu to do a backup
- If you copied the custom rom as update.zip, select ‘apply sdcard:update.zip’, else select the option below.
- all done

Playing back 1080p content however, was still a problem. I was never able to get smooth playback with mplayer. Only the xbmc videoplayer could play 1080p smoothly on my system. XBMC is not an option due to the WAF, it has to be something that runs from MythTV.

Fooling around with coreavc-for-linux (I love CoreAVC on Windows) got me nowhere. Recompiling, tweaking and updating mplayer/nvidia/xorg, nothing seemed to work.

Until I tried a new version of mplayer from the Debian Multimedia repositories. The mplayer version in that repository has support for a new feature in the linux nvidia drivers that (finally) allows video decoding on the GPU.

The easy steps to get this to work:

• Download and install the new nvidia linux drivers (180+)
• Add the Debian Multimedia repository to your sources.list
• Install mplayer from the new Debian Multimedia repository
• Start mplayer with ‘-vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau’

More than a year of tweaking and tinkering made redundant by these easy steps, excellent!

I’ve been using my new Macbook for a whopping two days now, so I think it’s time to share some of my early impressions.

First of all, I’m not a typical computer user. I’m picky, opinionated and totally unreasonable when it comes to my requirements for an Operating System. Before my Macbook my setup consisted of:

• Desktop PC, Windows XP: Used for gaming mainly, also editting photo’s and as a ‘fat client‘ for Putty
• Laptop, Ubuntu: Used for work and midnight-coding. Purely a development tool for developing Ruby on Rails webapplications, accessing icanhazcheeseburger.com and other important work stuff.

The Windows XP of my desktop PC is a necessary evil. Games for Linux and Mac OS X are rare and my girlfriend still has an emergency Windows-account she can use whenever her Windows XP laptop refuses to work properly. Simply put: I’m stuck with XP for my desktop and I don’t really mind (a lot).

The laptop running Ubuntu belongs to my employer. Ubuntu is an excellent platform to develop Ruby on Rails applications, the huge Ubuntu repository contains recent version of all necessary tools and the apt package manager is simply unmatched on any platform. To isolate myself from outside influences during coding sessions I use a closed headphone and Amarok (a rather bloated KDE program, so I can’t bitch about iTunes without being an ever bigger hypocrit). Pidgin provides me with access to nearly all IM networks, while TwitterFox keeps me in touch with fellow twitterati.

My new Macbook is supposed to replace the Ubuntu laptop and serve as an alternative to my desktop at home. Here are some of my initial thoughts regarding this migration:

It just works

It doesn’t.

Ok to be fair, a lot of stuff just ‘works’, I am however spoilt by Ubuntu 8.10 which also ‘just works’, it just fails to work on different points compared to Mac OS X. OS X fails to ‘just work’ as a Ruby on Rails development environment, sure it comes preloaded with Ruby on Rails, but it has ancient version of Rails, Ruby and Rake and this completely screwed me over while trying to convert my fresh Macbook into the ultimate web-development machine.

Multimedia support is not as good out of the box as Ubuntu. In Ubuntu all the codecs you need are in the repository and are a easy to install. To be fair, this is only since the 8.x branch of Ubuntu. For OS X I had to find a bunch of codecs from questionable vendors (I’ll never trust the DivX corporation after their bloated Windows installers) before I could get my movies and series to play in Quicktime.
Speaking of horrible failures, I don’t see how anyone could enjoy Quicktime. It’s completely inadequate compared to Zoom Player on Windows or MPlayer on Linux. I’m planning to replace it by something decent ASAP. Preferbly something pretty like XBMC or the OS X specific port of this brilliant project.

Package management? What’s that?

Mac OS X understands package management just like this girl understands “PC’s”. Not a clue. Everything application you install has it’s own auto-update function and the built-in Software Update is about as useful as “Microsoft Update”. Which is not bad, it’s just not as great as Ubuntu’s software updater.

MacPorts < apt

MacPorts is similar to Debian/Ubuntu’s APT. It provides an easy way to install and update software for your Mac. Unfortunately it’s more like Gentoo’s ‘emerge‘ and less like Debian’s ‘apt-get’. Everything you install has to be compiled first, and if you want to install something with fancy graphics you’ll have to wait for an hour while the X window manager gets compiled (ok, this is only the first time).
Fortunately it does what it’s supposed to, it just takes quite a lot longer than APT and the repository of available software is tiny compared to Ubuntu’s insane heap of FOSS. For example, something like ‘htop‘ is not available on OS X, but luckily there’s the Activity Monitor GUI to offer some compensation.

OS X < GNU

Mac OS X implements all the usual Unix tools. Things like find and grep. These are kinda different to the GNU-tools I used on my Ubuntu laptop and Debian servers. As far as I can tell after these few days of use, the Mac OS X versions are inferior to their GNU-siblings. I’ll have to get used to this or find alternative tools

So much for the bitching, here are a few things I do like:

It just works

A lot of stuff works just fine out of the box. The prepackaged software gives Ubuntu a good run for it’s money. Also, it’s obvious OS X is more popular than Linux. Quite a few software products offer a reasonable up-to-date version for Mac. Skype for example has a Mac version which is nearly identical to the Windows version, while the Linux version is lacking a lot.

Basic hardware compatibility is not an issue

If you’re the only one making hardware for your OS (or is it the other way around?) it’s easy to make that hardware supported in the OS. While the linux kernel provides support for nearly every graphics card, sound card, IDE controller and toaster made in the history of electronics, OS X only has to support the very limited set of hardware used by Apple. And to Apple’s credit, it does this very well. Unlike Linux they don’t have to work around crappy vendors breaking standards that crash your laptop after a resume-from-standby. As a result, stuff like suspend-to-ram and connecting multiple monitors works really well and quickly.

It’s a lot like Linux

Overall I feel quite at home in OS X already. I was able to set up a proper development environment during a single evening, inspite of the great efforts of MacPorts to keep compiling very large bits of software. During the coming weeks I expect to find a lot more things that are different/worse/better in OS X compared to Ubuntu but the past few days have made me optimistic about the chances of OS X being the only OS on this Macbook. I originally intended to go for a triple boot setup; Windows XP, Ubuntu and OS X, but I think I’ll settle for installing Windows XP in a VirtualBox. Not because I like XP that much, but for testing web-application in the worst browser ever made and it’s younger brothers.

That’s it for now, I’ll probably write a new post in a couple of weeks, because I’m sure OS X has plenty of annoyances and amazements left in store for me.

Unlike the old Livebox, you only get limited access to forward ports and change the wifi SSID and password. Even DynDNS support, which was perfectly usable in the Livebox, is disabled.

Looking for a way to disable the built-in DHCP server and change the default IP address of the Speedtouch 706 I tried flashing the device with the original firmware instead of the locked one. However, the firmware updater refuses to flash because of incompatibility.

This didn’t stop me and using TFTP I tried forcing the flash, but again, this didn’t work.

After some googling I came across a vulnerability in the Speedtouch 780, that allows you to access any page of the webinterface, even the ones you shouldn’t have access to. Using this vulnerability it’s possible to download the modem’s configuration, change it in a text editor and upload it again.

Thanks to this vulnerability I was able to disable the DHCP server and change the symmetric NAT implementation to cone NAT. The default configuration makes it nearly impossible to play online games based on a player-to-player architecture. C&C3 and Supreme Commander are two games that use this technique to allow players to play against eachother. With the original configuration I was unable to connect to about 80% of players in Supreme Commander, now with the cone NAT configuration I no longer have any issues.

You can find instructions to download/upload the Speedtouch configuration here and you can find/replace these bits in the user.ini to get cone NAT instead of symmetric NAT:

connection bind application=CONE(UDP) port=0

connection appconfig application=CONE(UDP) timeout=0

ids config state disabled

But then I stumbled upon an ad by someone selling her Canon 1D Mark III to go full-frame. The price was good, and the camera turned out to be in perfect condition. So I spent a little more than expected, but I’m now the proud owner of the Canon EOS 1D Mark III.

This thing should be great for shooting sporting events at the next Campzone, and ISO performance is absolutely amazing for indoor shots.

• Smartphone, whatever that means
• UMTS/HSDPA
• Not Windows-mobile

This basically leaves the Nokia N95-8GB and the Sony Ericsson w960i.

I liked the N95′s design better, and the fact that it accepts a normal headphone instead of some crappy proprietary plug.

Pro:

• Tons of features
• Quick
• Pretty

Cons:

• All plastic
• Buttons feel slightly ‘cheap’ and ‘plastic’
• Rather large compared to my previous phone, Motorola V3i
• Realplayer as the default video player application

All in all I really like this phone, among all the features, there’s even an option to actually call someone, awesome!

The Piranha is Razer’s second attempt to create a gaming headset. You can read what I thought of their first attempt here.

First impressions

The Piranha looks like a typical headset. On-ear cups, flexible mic-boom and an adjustable headband. The Sennheiser PC150 follows the exact same recipe.

An obvious difference (at least in the dark) is the glowing Razer logo. To power these LEDs the Piranha has a small USB plug. This plug is not used for anything else, so if you don’t like the blue LEDs, simply unplug the USB connector.

Cables and connectors

A nice touch is the braided cable. This rope-like cable feels like you could climb a mountain with it and will certainly last a long time. The braided cable splits into three rubber wires for the audio, mic and USB plugs. The three seperate wires are very long compared to the two short wires on the Sennheiser PC150. This enables you to have the microphone input and headphone output some distance apart.
The Piranha’s heaphone-plug is connected to the control unit of my Logitech Z-5500 on my desk, while the microphone is plugged directly into my soundcard. This wouldn’t be possible with the Sennheiser PC150 without an extension cord.

Halfway the braided cable there’s a small inline volume control, mic switch and shirt clip. The volume dial feels ok, and the shirt-clip does what it’s supposed to. Unfortunately the mic switch feels very cheap and flimsy. You could easily switch the mic on/off accidently.

Headset and sound quality

The headband has some padding and can be adjust to fit nearly any head. The mic-boom is attached to the left earcup and can be easily adjusted. The boom itself is flexible and you can bend it into position.

The microphone will enable others to hear you loud and clear.

I’m not too impressed by the ‘uni-directionality’ of the microphone. Typing on my keyboard was picked up just as easily as my voice. Overall the microphone is good for a gaming headset.

The other important aspect is the sound quality of the headphone. The Piranha produces a darker and bassier sound than the Sennheiser PC150, which is also a bassy headphone. Overall it’s not bad for a gaming headset, but it’s not really better than the PC150.

Conclusion

The Piranha is a nice headset. Decent sound and microphone quality, good ergonomics and a solid quality feel (mostly). The Piranha doesn’t offer any new features for a headset, but it does a good job of the basics.

It suffers most from headsets like the Sennheiser PC150, which offer almost the same features for half the price. In the end I would recommend this headphone to anyone looking for a good gaming headset. But I’d also point out the cheaper alternatives and HiFi headphones.

Pro

+Well built headset, very nice cable

+Microphone and sound quality are OK

+Good ergonomics, comfortable

Cons

-Expensive

-Cheap microphone switch