Hi there, reader

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GRUE

Robot Overlord Scenario #6378

If you have iPhone (3GS or newer) or iPad, this demo of Epic technology is stunning running on the IOS platform.

iTunes Link:  Epic Citadel

source: http://toucharcade.com/2010/09/01/unreal-engine-3-tech-demo-epic-citadel-available-for-free/

(if you don’t have one of the devices, you can view the video of it below.)

emulating car racing gaming with real r/c cars and cardboard tracks

RACER DEMO 0.1 – video game mashup from sputnic on Vimeo.

Documentation of the demo setup of “RACER” –
an interactive video game installation
featuring a racing arcade, rc cars, and lots of cardboard.
This is an ongoing (if underfunded) project.

concept & design: Malte Jehmlich / sputnic.tv
electronics:Matthes Mikysec
production assistance: Artur Gerz, Eleni Giannakoudis
(plus many many more… thank you!)
documentation camera & edit: Anton Korndörfer
music:STA$D400

documentation: racer.sputnic.tv

If anything goes wonky, let me know…

Our Zygote Interactive Balls at the Olympics from Alex Beim on Vimeo.

Everyone who uses Firefox regularly has a core of extensions that they have grown to use so much as to make them necessary to browsing.  One of the most tedious parts of browsing and then posting material is the saving and organizing of large amounts of pictures.  I fully use 4 extensions every day for this task, and have several others that I use at least weekly.

One of the most useful of these extensions was Bazzacuda Image Saver.  I loved this app because it could detect images in tabs, save them to a predefined folder, and close those tabs, all in one step.  Plus it has the separate ability to find the largest image on a page opened in the current tab, and will save that image and close the tab.

Upgrading to new Firefox versions takes a little bit of finding, updating,  and re-installing of extensions.  For the most part, everything works at least the same as before, but with each new version, we all lose a few extensions that were orphaned by their developers.  I lost Bazzacuda when I upgraded to Firefox 3.0.  The extension would work every so often, but for the most part gave a very generic error and did nothing.  I tried to find other extensions to replace it, hoping that eventually the developer would fix the extension.  I was let down on both counts.  No other extension (or combination thereof) would replace it, and the developer website is now redirected to something completely unrelated.  Despite many comments asking for updates, the developer has been silent on the Mozilla Addons page.

So, a few days ago, I set out to see if it would be a simple change to fix it.  I had already overriden the version number to allow it to install, and unpacked the code to take a look.  Unfortunately it wasn’t something simple to find, but I eventually found it and fixed the problem and the little cascade of other problems it caused.

So, since it wasn’t something superficial, I am releasing the modified code.  I changed the name to be generic, just in case the original developer decides to release more versions of his own program.  This updated for Firefox version 3.0.2 extension is called simply Image Saver. Both the original extension and my updated version are under MPL/GPL licensing, so it should be no problem.

I also wish to add-on functionality in the future, such as more folders and more hotkeys.  So renaming it now seemed best.

Download it from the Image Saver Project Page.

update 10/9/08: If you are one of the people that downloaded this yesterday, please redownload it and install again.  A bug not allowing the default folder location to be saved has been fixed. Eventually I’ll put automatic updates in.

The hype team behind Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles has released a multi-platform metagame, named Terminator Ambush.

Play consists of two levels.  On one hand you are the hunted.  Use an iPhone to check in using your GPS location via their Ambush iPhone application.  Which looks like this:

You get points for putting in more location, but then the other portion of the game comes into play.  On the Terminator Ambush website, you are tracked by your check-ins on a non-descript virtual map.  Hunters can use this data to try and determine your next check-in point and lay a trap.  If they get you, you are terminated.

I’m not sure if it’s entirely working, as I used the iPhone app while running around town today.  It shows my plots but my score has not been updated at all.  The plot points were much shorter distance apart on the virtual map than I had thought, that with the large trap reticle, it should be easy to terminate people.  What I mean is, I went in 10 mile sweep through Austin while running errands, and my path markings are just about contained in a one-inch square area.

Yes, it’s a little big-brothery that you are uploading your GPS data, but luckily it doesn’t show any real-world tie-in for people to actually track you or anything.  But, meta-gaming like this is a fun idea, that I expect will become even more popular now, with all the iPhones and other GPS phones being released.  There was a another game announced previously called Parallel Kingdom which has a more involved concept of building virtual buildings and such as a sort of GPS MMO.

]]> http://www.drzy.com/2008/09/13/testing-polls-iphone-21/feed/ 0 http://www.drzy.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-webbrowser-released/ http://www.drzy.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-webbrowser-released/#comments Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:27:14 +0000 rosicrux http://www.drzy.com/?p=826

In fact, I am posting from it now.

I was skeptical, and I wasn’t alone in that feeling, but I only had one day to be skeptical because they only announced this thing yesterday!  (Kudos for keeping it under wraps).

Google Chrome is a web browser built on WebKit, which powers other well known browsers such as Apple’s safari and KDE’s Konqueror.  Google included a cute online comic book to explain the technology here.  The gist being that the web browser uses entirely separate processes to load each separate tab.  This goes beyond simple multi-threading, and gets into OS territory.  They want to do this to eliminate browser hangups from ultiple tasks needing to use the same process.  While this can and will usitilize more memory and processor power, it also allows one to regulate it easier, especially memory-wise.  Plug-ins (when they appear) will also use separate processes.

The comic gets into computer science territory when they explain how they built their V8 from Webkit.  It streamlines object manipulization and pointer calls and other things you can read about there.

I’m impressed.  First off at the ease of slipping into it right from Firefox.  It handles the same keyboard commands I’m used to, and tabs behave much the same.  Two things it does not have that firefox has:

• Memory munching.  Yes, it uses a spearate process and memory space for each tab, but these are confined spaces, unlike Firefox which could eat all my memory if I let it.
• Addons. none. Zilch.  Yeah, it’s a beta, but man I need my add-ons.

The lack of add-ons will make me only piddle with Chrome when I feel like, not use it for a main browser.  For one, I have many that are hard to live without.  And two, Firefox is damn snappy without any add-ons, too, so it’s unfair to compare Chrome until it’s got the same capablities as a fully-loaded Firefox browser.

But the technology is impressive, and obviously since everything is open source, we are going to have a flood of add-ons coming very soon.

While they extremely oversimplify the assets of parallel computing, and discounting the fact that even low-cost CPU’s do plenty of parallel computing nowadays with multi-core systems, there can be no mistake of the sheer awesomeness of 1100 paintball guns firing at once.

And so I give you Adam and Jamie of the Mythbusters in their painting class 101 (filmed at Nvidia’s Nvision show):

Well, the wife and I got iPhone 3G’s today.  But they really should be called iPhone 2.5G’s.

After Wired’s article about the survey they did of 3G users in various locales across North America, I was ready to discount the iPhone 3G’s troubles with the 3G network as mainly due to faulty local networks.

Then again, something didn’t sit right in that conclusion.  It all became crystal clear as the young, stoked Apple attendant was ringing up the phones.  We talked a bit about the Wired article, and I told him I was confident about the iPhone being ok here in Austin, because of the article and my current phone.  I have had a Samsung Sync SGH-A707 for almost 2 years now, and the one problem I have never had with it is bad reception.  I have 5 to 7 bars (which is max on the phone) on 3G almost the entire time I am in town.

Then he said, “look at it now”.  I did and it showed 5 bars of 3G on the Samsung.  It never wavered while my wife was getting her iPhone setup.  Then as my iPhone was setup, I saw that it has only one bar of 3G for a brief moment and then switches to 3 to 5 bars of Edge.  That was enough test for me.  The Apple store employee says they never get 3G at that store or around it on the iPhones.

I sit here now, in South Austin (the store was in North Austin) with the new iPhone showing 5 bars of Edge, reading this rebuttal to a rebuttal of the Wired article…  essentially saying it is ‘mostly’ still the network.

It’s not the network.

I remember that the Samsung Sync is known for its exceptionally high radio strength.  But Wired’s survey chart certainly shows Austin as solid green for network stability/strength.  And yet the phones we just purchased have a very hard time connecting anywhere in town with more than a couple bars, and drop to Edge a majority of the time.  It was a good theory, and I appreciate the survey, but unfortunately it isn’t backed up in reality.

An eon in modern time ago (a year) I posted a small extrinsic blurb about the upcoming Microsoft technology dubbed Photosynth.  I thought the link explained and showed it better than I could, so no need for a further post.  But now it is released, and now it deserves the shoutout.

This is a simple “synth”. It was taken by some guy in Austin on his cameraphone. He took a few shots of the 360 bridge (a pretty noticeable landmark), just across the river from where I used to work at Origin. I think this shows the power of Photosynth. First of all, this was easy to find, I just did a Photosynth search for Austin, and it was the first choice. Second this was only a few short photos in a cameraphone. This isn’t the Taj Mahal demo with 400 shots with a $5000 DSLR camera. No, this is normal guy with possibly time on his break from work to snap a few shots through a window and upload them. You can still zoom in on them and skirt all around his view.. and it captures his view amazingly well.

That’s all I have to say, except one more thing, kudos to Microsoft to allowing embed code. Normally that wouldn’t get kudos, because every website on earth has some free embedable content on it nowadays, but kudos for finally coming around. (but an iframe? seriously?)

old.

I still get that twinge of jealousy with all his equipment that would have cost a pretty penny back then.  Not to mention his parents never seem to care about him wardialing thousands of calls on their line.  My parents freaked out everytime a computer would dial me.  But how else would I join those wionderful BBSes and get my TradeWars on?

WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars

As the title says, not much more to say. This is a huge update with thousands of changes across the board, both on the frontend and backend… so pretty much a brand new browser. I’ve tested a few of the builds, but a couple of my extensions wouldn’t work with 3 (yet), so I haven’t used it for my main browsing.  But I love the auto-bookmark search addition, which was my favorite feature of the Flock browser.  Plus it seems alot more snappy, and less memory hogging than Firefox 2.

Mozilla is trying to get a world record for most downloads in a day off the thing. See more at SpreadFirefox.

And I do mean old. I will say that I had almost this exact same dot matrix printer that I used for many many years. Kudos on using the Spectrum, but the amazing thing to me is that the hard drives act as speakers.

Here it is… the remix of Radiohead’s “Nude” :

Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

Creative makes sound cards.  Sure they make alot of other things now, but they built their business on sound cards.  They succeeded a thrived in the very early PC market to make soundout of PCs better and better.  This is where the good part ends.

There are many constants in PC hardware, and one of those is that Creative drivers suck.  I mean, there are other companies known to have substandard drivers or to not make very frequent updates.  But I bet if there was a poll of the ones most well known for this, Creative would clearly be at the top.  Another bad thing Creative is known for is misleading advertising and product specifications.  By misleading I mean total untruths.  No matter how many times their shady product details are revealed for the truth they are by many respected hardware reviewers, they still seem to one-up themselves.

I won’t be going into the whole history of this, because frankly it just requires a few words in Google like “creative misleading” or “creative shady” or something similar,  and you will get more than you will ever want to read.  And you know what you won’t find?  You won’t find one Creative representative denying any of it.

But, this article is about some current topics.

First: Creative has a second-wave of X-Fi sound cards.  These sound cards are different from the previous few X-Fi sound cards in one important way:  They don’t have an X-Fi chip in them at all!

Second: Creative doesn’t want your old non-X-Fi card to work in Windows Vista.   Y’see, Creative hardware of past generations work fine in Vista.  There is absolutely nothing hardware oriented keeping them from working, and working well.  But Creative won’t make drivers for them.  Not only that, but when a intrepid user modified the drivers for the Audigy card he owned, Creative handed him the Cease and Desist rigamarole. (Because that link is straight to the Creative forums, and possibly could be modified or removed at any time, I include the post in it’s entirety after the break.)

Daniel_K:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards.  In principle we don’t have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative.  Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended.  We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services.  The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing.  By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods.  When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own.  If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you.  We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages.  To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP.  In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules.  If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O’Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

Forum Moderator
Creative Labs

Apple fanatics have one less tic mark to their list of all that is good.

Linux fanbois can continue their chest pumping, however.

Apple users tend to be a fanatical lot, often expressing their choice in pre-fabricated computing platforms as if it were a religious experience. There is no sense running down comparisons or arguing any points, it’d be just like arguing religion or politics.  This is really odd considering it is just an electronic device. Even if it comes in a pure white candy shell.

One of the common things to hear supporting the halo around Apple is that “Macs don’t have viruses”.  Apple even proclaims it in one of their Mac vs. PC ads, and on their website. Of course, this is false, but don’t try explaining that.  They also state that because they use a Unix base for Mac OS X, that there are little to no vulnerabilities.

But Thursday, in an international security conference called CanSecWest in Canada, there was a little hacking competition waged. The “PWN 2 OWN” competition featured a $10000 grand prize to hack into a laptop and steal a file. First one wins. Charlie Miller did it in 2 minutes.

The machine was running the latest Mac OS X version with all security patches. Due to agreements at the conference, the way he hacked it will not be revealed until after Apple has been fully notified of the breach. But the contest had stipulations that the contestant could only use software pre-installed on the system.  So, the likely vulnerability was Apple’s Safari web browser.

The thing is, he could have gone after any OS, as the three laptops offered for exploiting were one each of the Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux varieties. Why did Miller choose to target the Mac? Because it was the easiest.

The format war is over.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

Now we can finally all go buy a damn movie player. Even though we won’t notice that much difference over regular DVDs. And now Microsoft can scramble to change their XBOX360, or not.

click the link at the top or the link below to see the full press release.

Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses

19 February, 2008

---

Company Remains Focused on Championing Consumer Access to High Definition Content

TOKYO–Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. “While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba’s commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

note: I started this review before the holidays, shortly after I bought these two mice. I put it on hold due to the sad fact that the Logitech G9 laser died on me. So, you lucky readers get a bonus anecdotal review of the Logitech support and RMA process near the end of the article.

I’ve been meaning to do formal reviews on drzy for awhile. But I get too lazybusy and usually just do a three-sentence blurb in a semi-related post. But after my Logitech G5′s middle button finally annoyed me enough to seek a replacement, I decided to upgrade. That, and the fact that there are some amazing deals on mice right now. Well, amazing deals compared to their suggested retail price, anyhow.

About 4 or so months ago, I started having problems with the middle mouse wheel/button on my Logitech G5. It became increasingly difficult to click the button without having the wheel register a move. This was compounded by the fact that the wheel also seemed to be “misaligned”. As in, the wheel doesn’t register a move just on the little wheel “clicks”, but also between them sometimes, which makes for a frustrating experience not just in gaming, but even in normal browsing. I put up with this for a few months, sometimes searching the web for quick fixes or at least people to commiserate with who have the same problems. I found the latter, but none of the former. I paid good money for this mouse when it came out, yet it was out of warranty, so I had no options to get the new “improved” G5 mouse except to buy it, again. I really hate buying the same thing twice. I am convinced the design problems with the G5′s mouse wheel have to do with over-engineering. They made it not just click down, but also click to either side as well. From the moment of buying one of these, you can feel the little wiggle in the wheel due to these “enhanced” buttons. As much as I tried to make them useful, these extra buttons are completely dead weight to me, as most games don’t even recognize them.

I won’t knock the performance of the mouse, although I wished they had made a better design than the old MX5xx series, the mouse was very accurate, and I had no laser-mouse-lag problems. (Keep in mind I game at low sensitivity normally, and am definitely in the “wrist-flicking” camp).

I heard about the Logitech G9 when they first announced it a year or so ago. It sounded boring, and the shape was… er, interesting. I had no intention of upgrading. I liked some of the other Logitech mice coming out, but I definitely didn’t want a cordless. I don’t care how many Mythbuster-esque tests people have run to refute it, I can definitely feel a response difference between wired and un-wired mice. Enough to make me uncomfortable with wireless mice, and therefore, never use them for gaming.

I had not heard of the new Microsoft Sidewinder or the new Razer line until I stumbled on both of them at an infrequent visit to Best Buy. I rarely retail shop nowadays for obvious price/availability reasons. But I will go if there’s a rare occurrence of a good sale, or if I’m buying something that never drops much in price, such as console-related merchandise. So, while I’m there I may as well browse. I went through the computer section and the first thing I saw was an endcap dedicated to Razer. They had three mice out on display: a Lachesis, a DeathAdder, (neither of which I had ever heard of) and a Copperhead. When the Copperhead came out was around the time I had bought the G5. I liked the Copperhead, but I didn’t like the gel feeling middle mouse and I had heard lots of bad things about Razer drivers (although Logitech has issues with theirs, as well). So I tried my hand on all of them, and while comfortable I wasn’t impressed. I have smallish hands and the Lachesis felt way too big. The other two were just too smooth. I like hard edges to hold on to. Still they were stylish and had impressive technical specs. Keep in mind, I wasn’t really looking to replace my G5 just yet.

So I wandered further and saw the Microsoft Sidewinder. People who have been computing awhile should recognize the Sidewinder name, as Microsoft used it for their high-end mice many years ago. I owned the first Sidewinder Optical. So, I guess they decided to relaunch the name with a high-end corded gaming mouse. The first thing that grabs you is the look of it. It has very unconventional shape and buttons. They didn’t have one out of the package, but you can reasonably see/grip the thing over the clear plastic container. I sat there pawing it a bit, and deciding if I liked it or not. The strange looks appealed to me as a sort of steampunk mouse. It had two round steel over-and-under thumb buttons, a sleek design broken up by sharp overhangs, and it looked like a mutated jellyfish.

The mouse contained an actual LCD panel, to display it’s sensitivity settings. Sensitivity doesn’t impress me much, as again, I am a low sensitivity player, but usually the higher the sensitivity it is designed to handle, the better the accuracy of the mouse, and usually the slickness of its pads increase as well. Ground lighting was also something that didn’t impress me, and I didn’t even know it was there until I bought it.

Oh, I let that slip. Yeah, browsing is a dangerous thing. I didn’t buy it there however. After mulling it over and checking out the improved G5, I went home from Best Buy. I wanted to read some reviews on these new mice from various trusted sites and also some buyer reviews. I especially wanted to review comparisons between them, such as this review eventually will be. I found some common themes.

First, the Sidewinder was big. Honking big. I didn’t exactly note this myself in the store, but not being out of the packaging is probably the culprit. To me, most Microsoft mice are too big, and that’s why I normally only buy Logitechs (or, when ball mice were king, I bought Kensingtons, which were wonderful ball mice), but this particular one didn’t seem excessively big. Boy, was I wrong. I sidled it up next to my G5 and Sidewinder wasn’t that much longer than it, but the problem lies in the width of the thing, and the fact that its “butt” is huge. The ass-end of the mouse is the tallest and widest part, and makes it nearly impossible to be a wrist-resting mouse user, as I am. This ended up being the deal-breaker. I knew it after a few hours of use, but I gave it a week or so, and it didn’t get any better. (You’re welcome, all you Call of Duty 4 players who took advantage of my overweight mouse problem).

More observations: The buttons on the Sidewinder were remarkably nice. They clicked decisively but without much pressure needed. The two thumb buttons were feared at first, and then loved. The sensitivity was spot on and the mouse was very responsive. The mouse wheel itself was probably the thing most people liked. It was large, machined, detented, and had a great easy click and mouse wheel action. The smoothness of movement was noticeable and nice. It was very precise, even at 800 DPI. I didn’t like the hollowness of the mouse. It was plenty heavy, but felt hollow when moving it around, and the weight wasn’t very evenly distributed.

As for the Logitech G9, the few comparison reviews I found said the G9 was smaller, flatter, and of course, more expensive. The G9 retailed at a whopping $100 and the Sidewinder was still a hefty $70. Although I was still not in the market for the G9, the Sidewinder had to go back. But, while perusing my favorite deal sites for other rodents, I came upon my second great mouse deal in a row.. a G9 for $40 less! Of course I committed and received it a few days later.

The first thing to do was to line the two meeses up and compare dimensions. A picture showing such a comparison would be good right now, but I forgot to take some photos before I brought the Sidewinder back. The G9 is very flat, in fact flatter than any other mouse I’ve used in the past 6 or so years. It’s a big departure for Logitech, as their mice tended to get taller and longer as the years went on. The Logitech portable mice of today approach the size of Logitech mice of last decade. Because of it’s only slightly rounded shape, it fits beautifully in the hand for “fingertip” mouse users, but would be just fine for people who like to “palm” it.

The left and right button are fantastic, and the trigger finger of the left is performance tuned in that it is once again an entirely separete button, that pretty much will only grasp your fingertip in it’s little concave bowl. This give it a lightness and crispness when pressing it. The right mouse button is still seamless with the rest of the chassis. The mouse-wheel button is a little disappointing. It is metal, and more detented than the G5, and it has a rubber strip in the middle, but its button mechanism still exhibits some of the mushiness of the previous Logitech mice. The mouse-wheel can be set to click-stepping mode or to free movement (spin it as fast as you can!). The free movement is a gimmick, in my opinion… it’s fun to play with, but I can’t imagine keeping it on that mode without getting annoying. The two thumb buttons are very close to each other but are easy to distinguish and are also crisp in performance.

The G9 comes with two shells, as the mouse chassis itself is quite small. The main shell is rubberized and has a little thumbrest. The “speed” shell has no thumbrest and has a hard rougher plastic shell akin to many mouse pad surfaces. It also has little air vents. I’ve tried the speed shell and it is ok, but the rubberized one is so immediately comfortable that I went right back to it. I don’t really see a necessity for the second shell unless you don’t like rubberized grip.

Windows Experience

In Windows, the Sidewinder and G9 are almost equal. I give the Sidewinder a slight edge because of it’s superior mouse-wheel button, which is used alot when opening tags in such things as Firefox. I did some scooting in Photoshop to check their precision at their lowest through highest settings, and there’s just no denying that these are both extremely accurate, well tuned mice. I will make one remark: the Sidewinder’s laser is situated towards the front of the mouse in the center, while the G9′s laser sensor is nearer to the middle of the mouse and slightly off-center. depending on how you swing your mouse around this could be an issue. I believe most fingertip mouse users treat their mouse almost like a pencil and the more forward and center laser sensor is more natural. You really would only notice it in a broad sweeping gesture. But really, once one becomes acclimated to the movement of the G9, you adjust to its laser position instinctively. Both of the new laser mice were decidedly more precise and responsive than the G5. I never noticed the G5 being clunky or unresponsive, but after using the two new ones, it decidedly felt so.

Software

Both software/driver packages were far too involved for a mouse. Logitech and Microsoft both have always done this with their devices. Installing managers, profiles, skins, etc with all kinds of overhead is just overkill for mice. I know they want them to seem feature-rich, but bloat and an ever expanding taskbar is not welcome in this house. I usually use the native Windows drivers for all mice unless it precludes me from using some feature. Although I did install both packages, to test them. One thing about the Logitech drivers is that they would not install with any Microsoft extra drivers present, ie: the ones that got installed with the Sidewinder.

The Microsoft drivers went in fine and were clunky and bloated but worked well and allowed me to ignore them and go one with my business of headshots and gibs. The Logitech ones suffer from classic Logitech driver syndrome. They do things you don’t want and force you to remove them. Luckily the one reason I installed the Logitech drivers seemed to still work after I turned off the control panel: The pretty purple color of the LEDs. Apparently the setting gets saved in the mouse’s own memory, so no the control panel is just needed to change it, not to maintain it. (It even stayed purple in my dual-boot of Ubuntu linux.) What forced me to remove the control panel from ever loading again? No matter what i did, I could not get the mouse to leave “use enhanced precision” off. This is a setting in the regular mouse drivers in Windows XP. it is basically a mouse decelerator. When you slow down the mouse precision goes up by leaps and bounds, supposedly to enahnce you clicking accuracy. To me it is annoying and I always leave it off, even on my laptops. Logitech has apparently decided that it should be on at all times whether you like it or not. I could manually go into mouse settings and turn it off, but changing profiles, or rebooting, or even just spontaneously, it would turn itself back on. Removing the control panel did away with that annoyance.

I may reinstall it to mess with another interesting feature: variable stepping for resolution. Logitech has a section where one could make more or less steps in the mouse resolution and even make custom levels of resolutions. While I mainly stick at 800dps, I could see a slight jump to 1000dps being beneficial in some games, but much higher than that would require me to move the mouse more than I’d like, and would only be useful with sniper weapons. Tweaking to a custom resolution, instead of predetermined ones, that I can change with a button flick is pretty appealing.

Gaming Experience

The true test. No one buys a performance mouse for plucking around on the web.

The three games I was embroiled in (and arguably still am) whilst making this review were Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, and Eve Online.

Team Fortress 2 was the impetus for me to look longingly at other mice. The mis-clicking, double-clicking, or non-clicking of the middle mouse button caused many a casualty of myself, or when I was a medic, my teammates. I would choose the wrong weapons, not fire them at the right time, or not fire them at all. Frustrating is an understatement. I was willing to just buy a cheap mouse temporarily, but decided I should buy a quality one. I just was upset with the gradual decline of both the button and the wheel action on the G5 and consequently was a little peeved at Logitech because it was apparently a design flaw that they fixed in the next generation of the G5. Unfortunately mine was out of the warranty period.

The Sidewinder was beautiful because of the preciseness of the clicking, the very accessible side buttons, and the overall responsiveness. But, the clunkiness of the mouse in-hand, and the fact that it took up most of my mousing surface’s real estate, made movement awkward at times. I really think if they just kept the design but took it down to 75% of it’s size it would have been a contender. My hand would literally ache after play sessions, even after using the mouse for a couple weeks.

The G9 was better in every way except for the clicking action of the mouse-wheel, as expected. The precision and movement of the two mice are hard to pit against as they both perform admirably well at all resolutions, and switch between them easily. But the shape and feel of this mouse, the ease of my hand getting to the buttons made the process more enjoyable.

Call of Duty 4 had much the same experience. More precision is needed in this game due to the more realistic weapons, and really both mice performed well. Switching between precisions was flawless

Eve Online doesn’t need a fancy mouse, frankly. And all I can say is that both mice worked well in the game.

Logitech’s Return Process

So, I started this review in December 2007. I had been using the G9 about a week, and thought it a perfect opportunity to compare two brand new mice that I wouldn’t get again for some time. One day I was doing normal work at my machine when the little mouse arrow on the screen just stopped moving. Buttons all seemed to work fine, but the mouse wouldn’t budge. The lasers used in these mice are invisible to the naked eye, so I couldn’t check if it was on or not. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it still didn’t work, and using different ports, and rebooting the machine didn’t help. I went and plugged it into my laptop and still had no pointer movement.

I then went to the Logitech forums to see if anyone else had this problem, looking for a quick fix. In one thread with the exact same problems, I found out that the quick fix is to contact Logitech for a replacement. Ah, well. I went through their little form for support and pretty much typed in the paragraph above. Logitech gave me no hassle and apparently that was enough information for them , because they immediately asked for my address and info to send a replacement. They arranged for a pickup of my dead mouse, but I did not have to wait for them to receive it to get my replacement. The had sent the replacement right after acquiring my address, and I thought that was very cool. It wasn’t a refurbished or anything. I got a brand new mouse and it was sent 2-day air.

But now I am a little wary. I have never had a sensor go out on a mouse before. For a brand new mouse, it was a little disconcerting that there was actually a thread on this exact same thing on their official forum. This compounded with the fact that I had bought the mouse to replace my old ailing Logitech mouse. I expressed my concern to the support personnel handling my return case, as I wanted an answer if this was a problem that was known and fixed, or if it is just a “Replace and hope it doesn’t happen again” kind of deal. I didn’t get much info back.

Conclusions

First generation laser pointers worked well. That is, true laser pointers. I bought the G5 because it was new and a supposedly more precise technology that got away from the infra-red pointers. I didn’t know that laser mice had precision problems, and upgrading from my Logitech mx518, I didn’t notice it being any worse on quick movements. But while searching for solutions for my faulty middle-wheel, I found that many people had problems with the first gen laser mice such as the G5. This mainly affected whole-arm mouse users, ones that jacked the precision to the max and flung their mouse at breakneck speed across their desk. I did not experience this problem because of my relatively small movements at relatively low resolutions. Why does someone like me need a 3200 dpi mouse? Well, I don’t, but to get a finely tuned gaming mouse in all other aspects, I can’t get it any other way. Plus, I know if it can handle 3200 dpi, its lower resolutions are probably rock solid.

The two mice in this review performed remarkably well at all resolutions I tested. I only tested the pre-programmed ones, and have yet to test the custom resolutions on the G9. The differences between the two mice come down to preference, aesthetics, and hand-size… not in performance. As far as looks, honestly the Sidewinder first attracted me because it looks like some kind of cyberpunk spaceship. I can definitely see how it can be perceived as ugly, but I didn’t view it that way. The G9 is probably Logitech’s least-flashy current mouse. It is all black and satin finished. Sure it has a programmable LED light, but that’s it as far as panache. It doesn’t have the Sidewinder ground lighting, or LCD screen flair. If you have long fingers, or big hands and like a mouse with back, you can’t go wrong with either. If you have small hands, or are a wrist-flicker, or prefer a mouse with two different textures go with the G9.

Technology from the University of Wisconsin to “print” images in the air with a cascade of water droplets. They call it AquaScript.

The Youtube comments suggested exactly what iw as thinking… that this is a really neat technology, but the true genius of it would come out if they had a matrix of valves (instead of a line) and thereby created 3-D images.