Category: Hardware
Earlier this year Belkin released the n52te, an updated version of the n52 gaming keypad that I wrote about last year. I caved in and bought it recently. The n52 is comfortable because it has an ergonomically designed hand rest (if you have the n52te, it's coated in rubber). Out of all the gamepads that I've tried, the n52 was the only comfortable peripheral, in my opinion at least.
I think that many people are put off by the fact that the n52 doesn't have as many keys as some of the other popular gamepads. If you are wise about using both the n52 shift states (red, green, blue) and the normal keyboard shift states (shift, control, alt, and any combination of such), you will have MORE than enough buttons to bind everything that you could possibly want. Anyways, the n52te:
The keys on the n52te are a huge improvement. One of my only gripes about the original device was that the keys, especially the circular button, were very stiff and took quite a bit of time to break in. The new buttons are way more responsive. They are soft and quiet, I'd say somewhere between laptop keys and normal soft keys "feel wise.
The scroll wheel was also significantly loosened up so that it feels more akin to a normal mouse wheel. I own a Razer Diamondback, it feels pretty similar in terms of click and looseness. The dpad on the n52te comes with a "joystick" on it, kind of similar to the ones on the Playstation Dual Shock controllers. It's made of plastic and doesn't grip your thumb sufficiently. It is however, easily removable if you do not like it.
I don't know why Belkin/Razer chose do to this, but the null shift state was eliminated. Consequently, that is one less set of keys that you are able to bind. So if you use all 4 (null, green, red and blue), you are kind of SoL. Rumor is that the null state might be re-added in a future driver update.
The orange rubbery non-slip pad has been replaced by 6 rubbery feet, which grip better. The orange pad though adequate, still slid a bit, especially when my desk was dirty. Earlier n52te models had problems with the pads being uneven and rocking. Belkin seems to have resolved the issue since my gamepad is fine.
The profiles now load onto the controller's internal memory, allowing you to plug and play it without having to install anything. The software, now powered by Razer, is completely different now. The editor and the loader have been integrated. A few people have complained that the new software was hard to use. It doesn't bother me, but I don't extensively use the macros so, *shrug.*
To be honest, the $70 price tag for the Tournament Edition is a bit much (the new keys really really do feel much nicer though...and it matches my keyboard and mouse lol). If you already own an n52, it's not a huge upgrade. If you don't own one, if you can get past the learning curve it is an invaluable gaming tool. Highly recommended!
Tips:
- Bind your movement keys to the cursor keys instead of WASD. That way, you will be able to chat AND move, even if the chatbar is active. No more: "wwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa fuck."
- It was also suggested to bind all of your most commonly used spells to non printing keys.
- The LED backlight can be toggled on and off with a switch on the bottom of the pad.
I have new computer toys: An EVGA 512MB 8800gt Superclocked video card and a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750w PSU. Crysis runs smoothly with 4x AA and all of the settings on high at 1280x960. Every other non-Crysis game runs smoothly my preferred resolution, 1680x1050 with all of the settings maxed out. Not pushing as many FPS as I could because my processor is a bit of a bottleneck, but meh (I am tempted to upgrade to a quad core, bad Keiya no more computer parts).
The temperature issue: The card runs hot because the stock fan doesn't spin up fast enough, EVGA has (supposedly) fixed this in a BIOS update. Alternatively, you can just tweak the fanspeed thresholds in RivaTuner to have it spin up faster at certain temperatures. There is a good illustrated step-by-step guide here and here.
Busy lately, no time to post. I'll try to write a few posts to address the email questions that I have been blowing off /apologize.
I mentioned this topic in a previous post: Ray's Mod is one of the best G15 Winamp applets out there and as far as I know, it's the only one that will flash the LED's in beat with the music. My installation of Winamp has fallen into severe disuse since the great Coup d'iTunes well over a year ago. I've actually loaded it a few times soley for the purpose of turning off the lights to watch the LED's flash (hush, I am easily amused :P).
I had trouble finding a download link to the mod, it doesn't seem to be hosted at many places. So here's a working link from a German G15 mod forum. The flashing LED thing is somewhat of an easter egg because it's a hidden option. Here is what you need to do in order to enable it.
- Go into the Ray's Mod option menu, it should be the 4th G15 media button.
- Hold down both CTRL keys without letting go, while scrolling to the bottom.
- There should be 2 additional options on the very bottom of the options list. Enable them with the play/pause key, then let go of the CTRL keys.
Load some tunes and enjoy!
I like reading the "
Reader WoWspace of the Week" articles over on
WoWInsider. It's interesting seeing where other people play, in addition to giving me purchasing ideas (naughty naughty, I spend enough on "stupid computer crap" and "personal ergonomic comfort.") Figured I would do my own:
- Desk: Beech Veneer Ikea Galant table. My old deks was a large awkward computer cart. I like this one because it's plain, sturdy, and spacious. I am considering going back over to Ikea and getting the cable organizer that attaches to the underside of the desk, so that I can run the cables through it and hide them a little more.
- Chair: It was on sale at Office Depot for around $99. It's cushy and it's leather.
- Monitors: 19" Samsung SyncMaster 914v and 22" widescreen Samsung SyncMaster 225BW. Both were Black Friday sales, for 2005 and 2006.
- Speakers: Cheap Creative 5.1 speakers from Best Buy. One day, I'll replace them with a nicer set of PC surround sound speakers, but these are sufficient for the time being.
- Nostromo n52 Speedpad: I love this thing, it's so handy. I have just about every single ability and macro that I could ever want to use bound to the gamepad. It does though, take quite a bit of time to get used to. I don't think I can play without it now.
- Logitech G15 Keyboard: Newest toy, posted an article about it lately. My other keyboard drowned in a tragic coffee incident.
- Razer Diamondback Mouse: It's a low profile mouse with on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment options. Pretty, glows blue, very responsive.
- Burning Crusade Collector's Edition Mousepad on top of an IcMat (bought it from CompUSA and hated it...the noisy scraping noise eventually drove me nuts). The MC mousepad is a bit small though...
Computer:
Built it during early August right when the socket 939 chips and boards dropped significantly in price. Had originally purchased a Radeon x1800XT, but it was a bad. Returned it to Newegg and bought a cheaper NVidia card in its stead. Figured that I would eventually replace it with a DX10 card.
- Case: Antec p180, It's the mini-fridge case, but it's large, quiet (sides are insulated), and designed well. It's also made of steel...and kind of heavy lol.
- CPU: AMD 64 X2 4600+, CPU Cooler: ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro
- Motherbard: Abit KN8 SLI
- RAM: 2GB Corsair ValueSelect 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400
- Graphics Card: BFG Geforce 7600 GT OC with a Zalman VF-900
- PSU: OCZ Powerstream 520w.
- Harddrives: HDD 1: 400g SATA Seagate Barracuda, HDD 2: 250g SATA Western Digital Caviar (video and bittorrent drive), HDD 3: 250g IDE Maxtor (junk drive)
- That's a 5.25" in floppy drive installed, in it's beautiful faded beige glory.
- Below it is the Creative X-Fi front audio panel with my Ventrillo mic plugged in (I know I know, will chat more with it one day I swear). Probably wasn't worth an extra $100 just for the remote and panel, but I <3 buttons.
- Case = dusty. I haven't cleaned out the front intake filters in several months. Luckily though, the inside of my case stays relatively clean. The filters seem to catch most of the dust.
- Top of the case: Old ass TI-85 graphing calculator sitting on top of a scientific calculator , and an external HDD enclosure.
- To the right is my old computer, which actually isn't functional at the moment because I don't know where my C drive is. When turned on, the entire case hums and emits a horrid blue glow. It's irritating.
Other Stuff:
I just cleaned my desk, otherwise there would be food and an assortment of paper work everywhere.
- My rooster mug <3.
- 30g iPod video. It's how I keep sane during the workday.
- PS2 and Gamecube with Jabba the Hutt perched on top.
- BC collector's edition.
- Miscellaneous games, DVDs, and literature. Typically the games, books, and DVDs that I am currently playing, reading, and watching.
- X-Fi and TV remote. I usually store these on the floor on the other side of the room :P
- $20 tensor lamp from Costco with a loose switch. Been broken for 2-years, keep meaning to fix it.
- Junk under the lamp: Small pile of old harddrives and a plush frog pencil holder. Both are sitting on 2 old computers, stacked on top of each other to form a table.
- Ugly black file box under the table is what I use as a foot rest.
- Right above my mouse is a white dish like thing with a clear blue d20 in it. It's actually an incense holder that I use as a spoon rest. When the weather is not hot, I love sipping hot cocoa in the evenings.
- The d20 makes important decisions for me.
Site Note: Updated the Karazhan Guide to include Prince M and several other things. Blocked a bots/spiders, IP banned several IPs who were obviously spammers. The CAPTCHA module seemes to be holding up well so far.
Character update: Bah, I need to rechant and regem around half of my gear. Shuffling stats around to compensate for having a tanking weapon that does not have spell damage and regemming more items with stamina. Need to farm more gold, burned a lot of consumables this weekend.
With a program called LCDStudio, you can customize your G15 to display nearly anything that you would ever want to see (Winamp information, system specs, CPU temperature, etc). The downside being, that you will need to keep the LCDStudio running in the background in order for the custom displays to function. In order to show your CPU/GPU temperatures and fan speeds, you will need to install SpeedFan (and keep it running in the background as well).
SpeedFan is more or less straight forward to setup. LCDStudio requires Microsoft.NET 2.0 on your machine before you can install it. After you download and install LCDStudio, you will need a license in order to run it. It's free, click the link and fill out the online form when the popup shows.
- G15forums is a great resource for downloading and seeking aid on starting templates. They aren't too hard to modify either.
- Good Winamp mod: Ray's Mod. Visualizer, makes the LED's flash, etc. In order to make the entire keyboard flicker: Go into the config screen, hold down both CTRL keys, scroll down to the bottom, enable both options.
- WoW mod: G15 Bar. It gives you 18 extra buttons to move stuff to.
....changed the site theme. Hoping that it's readable. I'll make a custom logo, banner, or something one day.
