I recently received this mouse as part of a christmas-gift from Razer, and I’ve decided to write a review about. In my opinion most hardware sites don’t have proper mouse-reviews. They either don’t know what they’re talking about, or are afraid they won’t receive any more review samples if they’re too critical. One notable exception is ESReality.

I think I do know what I’m talking about, and I don’t get review samples anyway

You might have read my review of the Razer Barracuda headphone/soundcard combo, if you did, you’ll know I might be a fan of Razer, but not a fanboy.

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I’ve previously posted about my migration from MRTG to Cacti and posted a graph showing the HDD temperatures of the disks connected to my Areca RAID card.

Now I’m posting my Cacti templates and script to get these values so anyone can create this graph.

Download

When I recently switched to Cacti for graphing my network, I ran some network speed tests and noticed that the peak of the graph did not correspond with the actual network traffic.

The peak of the graph topped out at 140Mbit while I’d been transferring data at around 600Mbit. It turns out that this is a limitation of 32-bit counters that overflow after 5 minutes.

So I decided to switch to 64-bit counters in Cacti. I ran my tests again and this time my graphs were a total mess. According to the graph I’d transferred multiple terrabytes of data in just 5 minutes.

After some googling I found out that this is a bug in the HP1800-8G. That report is nearly a year old and several firmwares have been released for the HP1800-8G since then, all with the same bug.

So I’ve sent an email to HP to make them aware of this bug, I even received a response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for using Hewlett Packard Customer Service.

This info has been send to the division and in a later Firmware update this issue will be adressed
unfortunatly there is no timeframe known for this fix yet.

Best Regards,

Hewlett Packard Customer Service

Doesn’t sound very convincing, but I hope the next firmware release fixes this annoying bug.

I’ve been running my Areca RAID array for a few months now and I’m very pleased with it. The only thing that was bothering me was the lack of MRTG graphs for the attached disks.
The disk temperature is an important thing to monitor, because as Google pointed out, a high disk temperature has a significant effect on drive failure.

Areca has made some excellent tools available to monitor your array and attached disks. For example, Areca’s web interface can show you all the disk temperatures.

In Areca’s web interface you have total control over your RAID array. You can add/remove disks, create new arrays and do a check on existing arrays.

But it’s annoying to have to log in to this web interface just to check the temperatures of the disks. Also, it doesn’t come with nice graphs and history information. It just shows the current temperatures.

Areca has also made a CLI utility. Using this utility you can do the same things as in the web interface. I’ve used the CLI utility to generate the data needed by MRTG. MRTG can only handle 2 datasources in one graph. Having 5 disks total (1 bootdisk, 4 RAID member disks), I would need 3 graphs to monitor the disks. So I decided to create a little BASH script that would take the temperature of the bootdisk, and the average temperature of the 4 RAID disks and feed this to MRTG.

My Ubuntu laptop was running quite hot because of the built-in Mobility Radeon 9700. After a while I found out about a little utility called ‘aticonfig’ that you can use to change the powerstate of your videocard.
Using this utility I was able to clock down the videocard and enjoy a cooler laptop.

Recently I re-enabled all desktop eyecandy by using the ‘compiz-fusion‘ project. I use compiz-fusion in combination with the closed source aTi fglrx driver. However, my laptop began running hot again. At first I thought this was because of all the 3D eyecandy that uses your videocard.

After a while I decided to check the powerstate of my videocard using the ‘aticonfig –lsp’ command and got the following error:

Error: Unable to obtain POWERplay information.

After some investigation I found out that the ‘aticonfig’ utility cannot be run from X display :1. Thanks to aTi’s craptastic linux drivers you’re forced to run 3D-eyecandy desktops on display :1 instead of display :0. So the solution was simple, kind of. I wrote the following snippet that can be run from display :1

DISPLAY=:0

aticonfig –set-powerstate=1

DISPLAY=:1

Put this in a small script and make it execute everytime you start your X session ( System, Prefences, Sessions). Hopefully aTi manages to catch up with Nvidia’s linux driver support and keep their promise about better drivers.

Yesterday I upgraded the server to some nice new hardware.

My main excuse for this is to view HDTV/720p content on MythTV. The old hardware just wasn’t fast enough for this. I also took the oppurtunity to change from a software RAID1 setup with 2x200GB disks to a hardware RAID solution with 4x320GB disks.

Just a month ago I told a friend who has a similar setup I’d never buy a hardware RAID card because they’re so damn expensive.

The new stuff

• Asus P5B
• Intel Core2Duo E6420
• 2 x 1GB Kingston PC5300
• 1x WD800JB 80GB (boot)
• Areca 1210 with 4x Seagate 320GB (RAID5)
• Zalman 460Watt PSU
• Geforce FX5200
• Soundblaster Live

In a drunk mood I slammed my head on the keyboard and produced this text:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

By a strange coincidence this also happens to be a AACS processing key!

Last month, Razer released its new mouse, called the Deathadder. Unlike the previous mouse, the Copperhead, the Deathadder uses a optical sensor (IR) and not a (UV) laser.

According to Razer the Deathadder’s sensor is an upgraded version of older optical sensors, offering higher speeds and slightly better resolution.

Also, this is the first Razer mouse (the Habu being a Microsoft mouse) which doesn’t use an ambidextrous shape. Sorry lefties.

On Razer Blueprints it quickly turned out there were quite a few problems with this latest Razer mouse. Razer presented the product that would suit players with a low in-game mouse sensitivity.
The first problem is positive acceleration.

This means that the mouse precision is unreliable because when you move the mouse some distance in a direction, and then move it back quickly, the cursor will not end up in the same place as you started. Unacceptable for a ‘gaming’ mouse.

The second problem is the ‘lift-off’ distance.

Old ballmice immediately stopped moving when you lifted the mouse up. Gamers regularly reposition their mice for optimum precision. When the first opticals appeared on the market, those mice kept moving even if you were slightly above the mousepad. The Deathadder was launched with the promise of a minimal liftoff distance. The first firmwares (<1.05) actually have a higher liftoff distance than any other mouse, sometimes as much as 10mm above the mousing surface. Almost unusable for people with low sensitivities. The mouse also kept moving if you pointed it at the screen, or at the ceiling. The sensor apparently trying to find some pattern to recognise in the incoming distant light.

The third problem is related to the scrollwheel.

As with any mouse you can press the scrollwheel down to make it work as a third mousebutton. The Deathadder seems to have a problem with this in games, where you’ll suddenly move around when you press the 3rd mousebutton.

Razer really has a problem with quality control, product testing and living up to specifications. Their trackrecord so far:

Razer Boomslang

A ballmice that regularly got stuck, both the buttons and the movement.

Razer Viper

an optical mice that wasn’t capable of tracking fast movements because it used an old sensor with a magnifying lens.

Razer Diamondback

using a very thin USB cable to minimize drag sounds like a good idea, but the cables on this mouse break easily internally. The first versions of the mouse also suffer from a pixel skipping problem when you change direction.

Razer Copperhead

Razer’s first laser mouze. Suffered from polling rate instabilities and low maximum tracking speeds. Also the original driver CD included a firmware update that would kill the mouse.

Razer IAS

Wasted enough words and time on this poor and very expensive set. The soundcard works fine, but is just 5 times too expensive. The headphones are a joke.

Razer will really have a problem on their hands when people start realising that their (expensive) products are almost never living up to their promises and break easily. This trend was already noticable after the Copperhead problems and the recent Deathadder problems haven’t exactly made things better.

I truly hope Razer get their quality control fixed.

Update:

The new Deathadder firmware (installed by default on new Deathadders) fixes all problems. This makes the Deathadder a nearly flawless mouse which I’ll recommend to my friends.

I’ve just received a new Razer HP1 after I’ve sent my previous set RMA last week.

The new headset suffers from the exact same problem as the previous set, so to summarize my findings about the Razer Integrated Audio System:

Razer AC-1. The audio card is way too expensive, you can get the same card with a different brandname at 1/4th of the cost

Razer HP-1. The idea of a decent surround sound headset really appealed to me, but the rear channel of the HP1 doesn’t have any bass, so I’ll use it as a stereo headset.

Update: Actually the audio quality is so poor (way too much high, no bass) that I’m keeping my old Sennheiser PC150. That’s a rather cheap PC headset but it’s way better than the HP1.

You might have read my previous post about the Razer IAS system. I didn’t give a final verdict on this soundcard/headphone combi because I thought my headphones were broken.

I contacted Razer about my concerns and they told me they were aware of these ‘no bass’ problems and would get back to me within a week, or two.

After no news from Razer in a month I started mailing them again. Turns out I need to send in my current headphone for an RMA. This RMA package would have to be sent to Germany, making it an international package.

I won this soundcard and headset in a contest, it got delivered 6 months after the contest ended and when it finally got there it was broken.
Nice prize….

I’m not sure if I’m even going to try sending it in, because it also turns out that my HP1 might not even be defective at all. The worthless rear channel speakers are ‘supposed’ to work like that. They’ve even made a ‘support’ page about it.

PROBLEM
I am not getting enough bass.

SOLUTION
For improved bass response in your music with the Razer Barracuda HP-1 Gaming Headphones, we recommend that you first lower the volume of the Front/Rear/Center/Subwoofer channels, and increase the Front and Sub-woofer channel volume, and then adjust the Center and Rear channel volume accordingly to get a more balanced audio output. You will enjoy a richer and fuller audio experience.

This of course is no ‘solution’ at all. If you hook up an iPod directly to the HP1 (with the USB-connector of the HP1 still in your computer for power) you’ll still get the same rubbish sound from the rear speakers.

Sound from the front speakers is nice, but still low on bass compared to other headphones. The rear speakers are just the high tones.

To illustrate how this sounds, I’ve made three MP3 files that (on normal speakers/headphones) illustrate how poor the HP1 performs. To do this, I hooked up my speakers to the PC and the HP1 to my iPod. I started playing the same track on the iPod and the PC. Now I used Winamp’s equalizer to change the output on the speakers so they’d sound roughly the same as the sound of the HP1 connected to the iPod. When they sounded about the same, I recorded a minute of the song with those equalizer settings.
Listen to the original first, and try not to cry when you listen to the HP1 versions.

Original:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HP1 Front Speakers:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

HP1 Rear Speakers:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The sound from the HP1 is actually a little worse still than these two “HP1″ mp3′s.

Conclusion

The AC-1 adds nothing new. It doesn’t have the mainstream support as Creative’s EAX/XiFi has, doesn’t add any new substantial features.

The HP1 is a comfy headphone, too bad it has no bass at all on the rear channels, making it a worthless headset for anyone who depends on surround sound. My trusty Logitech Z5500 is way better at telling me where an enemy tank is coming from. The HP1′s microphone is noisy and sounds hollow compared to the microphone on the Sennheiser PC150.

The Barracuda IAS is a very expensive kit that just isn’t worth it. For the same money you can get a XiFi, a decent headset and a stripper. That’s no choice at all.