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

Luckily there are some nice tricks you can use to make a remote kernel upgrade as safe as possible.

First, make sure you have a valid kernel. Copy the .config of an old kernel and ‘make oldconfig’ to make it work on your new-to-be-compiled kernel.

Second, make the kernel using the ‘make-kpkg’ package, don’t forget the –initrd parameter if you need it.

Third, after installing the kernel package, don’t forget to check if the initrd image got generated. For some strange reason Debian won’t generate this even after building with make-kpkg –image, you can read more about that here. You basically need to copy a file from ‘/usr/share/kernel-package/examples/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs’ to ‘/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs’

Fourth, you need to configure Grub2 so it uses a kernel boot option which makes the kernel restart if it can’t boot for some reason. To do this with Grub2, open /etc/default/grub and add “panic=5″ to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet panic=5″

Fifth, Grub2 needs to be told to only boot the new kernel once, so in case the new kernel panics, it automatically restarts using a kernel you know works (your current one perhaps). Else the ‘panic=5′ we set earlier will only lead to a reboot loop.

To do this open /etc/default/grub and change GRUB_DEFAULT to saved, like this:

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved

To configure ‘reboot-once-into-new-kernel’, we need to do two more things, first we need to tell Grub2 what your working, safe kernel is. Check /boot/grub/grub.cfg for the name of this kernel, but don’t change anything in this file.

My safe kernel is called: ”Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-2-686″, which I can set as the default, safe, kernel with this command:

grub-set-default ”Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-2-686″

Now we have to tell Grub to reboot once into the new kernel, again we need the name of the new kernel, mine is ”Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-example”, use this command.

grub-reboot ”Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-example”

Don’t worry, this won’t reboot your machine.

The final step is to generate a new /boot/grub/grub.cfg, else all the things we just did won’t have an effect

update-grub

Now you’re ready to reboot, good luck and fingers crossed. After a succesful boot, you can set your new kernel as the default using the grub-set-default command

grub-set-default ”Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 2.6.32-example”

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!