JIMINATOR
03-25-2005, 06:15 PM
Well, I picked up one of these to see if it would solve my mouse woes.... The dianmondback is a full 1600 dpi mouse. That is 4 times the precision of other mice. Right off the bat, microsoft detected it and it worked. Not that it was very controllable. The Razer software - well, that is a bit of concern when the install includes readme files from 2001 and 2002. the usual warning about noncertified drivers is asked and then a brief "FAILED" message appears. That was through multiple installs with different versions of the drivers. Windows was unable to detect the drivers as belonging to the mouse. I guess if they were to pay for the certification, they might discover things like this. The fix was simple enough, to change a 0 to a 1 in an inf file. If they had included a version of each inf file, this would not have been an issue, but alas, the time was wasted.
Ok, so the software. Everything is done as a global setting. So there are no per-program settings or per-directx settings. A nice feature is that X and Y axis can be adjusted separately. The sensitivity settings can range from 1 to 10. That is interesting, but the windows mouse control panel has its own options, and the pointer settings there more greatly impact the actual mouse speed. That is annoying, because you don't really know what effective dpi you are getting. At maximum settings I could cross 1600 pixels by moving the mouse about 1/2 an inch. That is much twice the 1600 dpi, and the extra would have to be coming from interpolation, which means a loss of precision in games. If you give up a side button, then you can dynamically adjust the razor sensitivity, it will show a graph onscreen with the sensitivity.
It is a small and dainty mouse. Very light with a thin cable to restrict movement as little as possible. The mouse looks like it has two side buttons, but each is actually a pivot button, meaning that you have 4 extras. The position though is horrendous. I found that I held the mouse right on the buttons. Clicking on the left side and I was clicking on the right side also. Unmapping the right side helps, although that is a waste. On the left side button, one side gets you the sensitivity setting, the other you can map to something. The way the side buttons work though you can click both at the same time, so IMO they are useless in games. Worse are the mouse/keyboard interactions. I found that using the supplied drivers or no drivers, my games would eventually become confused and then my weapon changing would no longer function correctly. It may be different in other games, but for me, that was the final straw.
Conclusion: The size and precision of the hardware is nice. Everything else is garbage and half-ass. The software is overall useless, no documentation is included with the device. If you are looking for a better mouse then I suggest waiting for the logitech MX-518. Their software also sucks, but the buttons are much better placed and the mouse holds better.
Ok, so the software. Everything is done as a global setting. So there are no per-program settings or per-directx settings. A nice feature is that X and Y axis can be adjusted separately. The sensitivity settings can range from 1 to 10. That is interesting, but the windows mouse control panel has its own options, and the pointer settings there more greatly impact the actual mouse speed. That is annoying, because you don't really know what effective dpi you are getting. At maximum settings I could cross 1600 pixels by moving the mouse about 1/2 an inch. That is much twice the 1600 dpi, and the extra would have to be coming from interpolation, which means a loss of precision in games. If you give up a side button, then you can dynamically adjust the razor sensitivity, it will show a graph onscreen with the sensitivity.
It is a small and dainty mouse. Very light with a thin cable to restrict movement as little as possible. The mouse looks like it has two side buttons, but each is actually a pivot button, meaning that you have 4 extras. The position though is horrendous. I found that I held the mouse right on the buttons. Clicking on the left side and I was clicking on the right side also. Unmapping the right side helps, although that is a waste. On the left side button, one side gets you the sensitivity setting, the other you can map to something. The way the side buttons work though you can click both at the same time, so IMO they are useless in games. Worse are the mouse/keyboard interactions. I found that using the supplied drivers or no drivers, my games would eventually become confused and then my weapon changing would no longer function correctly. It may be different in other games, but for me, that was the final straw.
Conclusion: The size and precision of the hardware is nice. Everything else is garbage and half-ass. The software is overall useless, no documentation is included with the device. If you are looking for a better mouse then I suggest waiting for the logitech MX-518. Their software also sucks, but the buttons are much better placed and the mouse holds better.