So I ran into a small hitch with the Popcorn Hour A-110 NMT over the weekend. It wouldn’t recognize the shared folders from my Windows Home Server. It turns out the solution was as simple as setting up the Guest account on the WHS with access to all of the media folders that I wanted to share with the Popcorn Hour. It might not be the “ideal” solution, but it’s also not that bad.

As for the Mamba, I discovered a slight annoyance. The mouse doesn’t actually charge (as I had assumed) when you use it in wired mode. You actually have to take it out of wired mode, plug the USB cable into the base station, and put it back on the charger for a few hours before you can use it wirelessly again. This isn’t a problem you’d normally run into if you have good charging habits, but it still kinda annoyed me when I went to use it in wireless mode this morning.

Well I have a performance update on the Mamba now that I’ve had some more time to use it. Spent all day at work on it for office/casual testing. I was using (for 1/2 of the day) the Mantis control cloth mouse pad (my very favorite, but doesn’t track well with my Ikari Laser at home, so I use a QCK at home) and (for the other 1/2 of the day) the Razer Destructor mouse pad. The Mamba and the Destructor is a match made in heaven, but it performed very well on the Mantis Control. It didn’t exhibit any jumping when I picked it up at the end of the pad on either of those two surfaces, unlike the QCK at home. It comes down to make sure that you choose a mousing surface and a mouse from the same vendor for best compatibility.

Used the Mamba and the Carcharias tonight for my Left 4 Dead match with the NCIX Steam guys, and let me tell ya… Maybe it’s because I had already used the Mamba last night, but I think I was MORE impressed by the new Razer headset. This thing is awesome. I mean, it’s not the best pair of headphones in existence, but they’ll stand up proudly to any other pair of $100 headphones, and the mic is significantly better in transmit quality (using Mumble) compared to the Sennheiser PC161 I usually wear around my neck. This is according to the other guys on the channel. They were asking me what I did to make my voice so clear tonight and I told them I was using the new Carcharias.

Here are some shots of the Mamba next to all my other mice. I’m getting more and more impressed with this thing the more I use it. Trying to go back to the G7 for comparison testing tonight was painful. The Mamba’s ergonomics are not my favorite, but I think a big part of that is that for YEARS I “cupped” the mouse isntead of using a fingertip grip. The G9 got me out of that habit a little bit (as you can see from the grips, that’s a VERY used G9), but I still find the G5 and the Ikari Laser more comfortable. The Mamba hangs with them though, and it has the HUGE advantage of being cordless. I kept finding myself wanting to “tug” the cord to free it up, something I do reflexively now to ensure it doesn’t get snared on anything, only to find that there was no cord to get snared!

I game at about 1000DPI, so honestly I couldn’t tell you the difference between most of these laser mice as far as that’s concerned. I can’t IMAGINE playing at 5600DPI, but I know there are people out there who want just that. It’d be far too twitchy for me with that kind of sensitivity, but the Mamba offers 5 adjustable sensitivity settings (more than any other mice here) and on-the-fly switching, so you can easily configure it with a variety of different sensitivity schemes.

Enough about the Mamba, and more about the Carcharias now. It’s more comfortable than the PC161 (which I can’t tolerate anywhere but around my neck) and about equal (maybe just a touch less) to my well broken-in Sennheiser HD555 and the SteelSeries 5H V2. The mic is excellent and the audio quality blew me away. I would challenge anyone to show me a better value pair of headphones for $100CDN. They use an open design, so you get more bass out of them than the SteelSeries, but with the disadvantage of them being less effective at isolating your game sounds from others and the voices of others from your game sounds. They still deliver a less “full” sound than my HD555, and they are a little harsh at high volume, but they deliver what I believe gamers want: Clear highs and deep bass. The mid-range is a little weak, but that won’t matter unless you’re listening to a lot of music. Either way, they are 1/2 the price of the 555s AND you don’t have to look like a dork with a clip-on mic on your shirt.

Don’t get me wrong. The HD555s still kill everything else in that picture for sheer audio quality, but it’s like saying a Mazda RX-8 will outsprint a Honda Fit. Of course it will, but the Honda fit delivers amazing value at a great price, and that’s why you’ll see many more of them on the road.

Well, I wasn’t expecting to get this kind of treatment after the initial arrangement with Razer to get a Mamba sample to demonstrate on Tech Tips!

Today our full reviewer kit arrived in a fancy metal briefcase and it included the Razer Mamba, Razer Carcharias, and (I requested a “recommended mouse pad” from them as well) a Razer Destructor mousing surface. There were also some other little goodies inside that I wasn’t expecting. I guess this attention to detail shouldn’t surprise me that much when the box that the Mamba comes packaged in is rumoured to cost as much as $20USD

I see I’m not the only one on the web who was so impressed by this reviewer kit that they simply had to take pictures of it. Engadget has an enormous gallery of this mouse and the unboxing experience. I just wanted to make this blog post to tease the readers and viewers of Tech Tips and give them an idea of what’s coming down the pipe.

A brief history of mice that I have owned:

Logitech MX700 – My first “expensive” set of peripherals was the Logitech MX Duo. Man that thing was sweet back in the day! I had gone from a generic BALL mouse to what felt like heaven.
Logitech G7 – Then I upgraded my monitor. All of a sudden I’m running at 1920×1200 and it feels SOOO laggy. I couldn’t figure out what it was at first, but turning down the resolution seemed to fix it. The MX700 had to go.
Razer DeathAdder – My first G7 died. I used the DeathAdder only briefly while I waited for my G7 to get back from RMA. I didn’t really like it. It felt kinda… cheap to me, and the tracking didn’t feel that impressive, and it died.
Logitech G5 – I bought one of these after the DeathAdder died and I couldn’t believe what I’d been missing out on. Wired is the way to go for sure!
Logitech G9 – This mouse still sits on my work desk, and I spend about 1/2 of my “mousing time” using it. I no longer use it for gaming though.
SteelSeries Ikari Laser – SteelSeries sent me one of these for the recent Tech Tips we did on “Gaming Essentials”. Its tracking is superior to the G9, and it’s FAR more comfortable to use

The Mamba is a unique product. It has no direct competitors because it is both a corded and a cordless mouse but I will be subjectively putting up against every mouse I have on hand. That means you’ll find out how it compares to the G9, Ikari Laser, and the G7 (the closest thing to a wireless competitor). I’m very excited to try it out, but alas I’m still at work…

Haven’t done any updates in a while, but I spent a few minutes tonight comparing this new IC Diamond thermal compound to the stuff that I already had on my Core i7 920 @ 3.8GHz on the Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME (Arctic Silver Ceramique that has been curing for a couple months). The results were not all that interesting. Using Intel Burn Test (basically Linpack) as a stress testing program with Prime95 small FFT to pick up the loose bits (IBT doesn’t seem to handle 8 threads at the settings I was using) my load temperatures were the same after remounting with IC Diamond compound, and a second mount gave me the same results again. There was a degree here or there, but given that the integrated sensor on the CPU is only accurate to +- 1 degree, that doesn’t really tell us anything useful.

I’ve never really bought into the hype about high end thermal compounds, but I’ll continue to use this stuff. FWIW my initial testing was done using the grain of rice method, and my second mount was done by spreading out the compound. Neither made a lick of difference.

I’ll be moving from my Gigabyte to the DFI board in that picture over the next couple of days. Mostly I just need another USB header for the T-balancer I’ve got coming, but I also thought it might be fun to try something new. I’ve always wanted a (working) DFI…

This thing is really cool. I have so many random computer components lying around that I find it hard to imagine that I could *want* to use anything other than a computer for media, but I won’t be moving a media PC into the bedroom of my new place. This little DivX player uses smart server software from DivX that is really easy to configure, the GUI is fast, the streaming over wireless G for my moderate bitrate files is excellent, and the device is so small you can practically tuck it into a corner and forget about it.

It easily detects which outputs you’re using, and I’ve tried it with HDMI, component, and composite using an older Samsung 21″ widescreen LCD. I’ve got it playing (over wired, haven’t tested wireless yet) MKV files in both 720p and 1080p, although only lower bitrate 1080p files are supported by the device. There seems to be quite a community following for this thing and it took all of about 30 minutes of set up (physical + software) and googling around to get it working great. It’s a lot better than building a PC…

Tech Tips upcoming, but here’s how to get it working with MKV. I’m using the latest connector software (1.5) and the instructions work fine even though they’re written for 1.4.

Now THIS is a cool product. I’m going to start with answering some of the questions that have shown up under the video as it’s been out for a few days already.

1. It does not appear to damage the screen on this glossy notebook belonging to Terren.
2. The magnet has no effect on your computer. Notebooks use LCD screens which are not affected by magnets.
3. It should not be used on a desktop because notebook screens are designed to be tougher and desktop screens are damaged more easily by touch (from the manufacturer).
4. It works on screens up to about 15.4″

This thing is really neat and impressed the heck out of us at the office.

We really couldn’t figure out a way to showcase this product that made any sense…

Obviously in the lab we can showcase the form factor, accessories, and the general look of the product, but it doesn’t really tell the story of how to practically use an item like this. Finally we decided to show it in its natural habitat, we needed to show it in a house. Neither the Cameraman nor I want people seeing our houses, so we settled for the local IKEA. We’re pretty lucky we didn’t get kicked out wandering around putting the Eee Top in places where we thought it would make sense in an average home.

Overall I think the product makes *more* sense in an Asian or European market where space saving is huge, but it’s still a cool gadget!

Kinda a silly edition of NCIX Tech Tips. We got a sample of the eVGA GTS 250 512MB graphics card that launched today. As usual we don’t really run any benchmarks, but rather we try to talk about what’s interesting and new. Not much interesting or new about this card, but the new price is definitely a reason to be excited. There are some launch promotions coming that should be very exciting. It’s good to see widespread availability right on launch day, but we’ve come to expect that from nVidia. Without further ado, enjoy our humorous first look at the GTS 250!

Well it’s taken me a while to get this one up on my page. I’ve been spending some time playing around with the new AMD DDR3 CPUs and we’re going to be putting together a short overclocking guide in the next little while. I also had some success with unlocking the 4th core on one of the two samples that I received, so the news is that IT WORKS!

Anyway, that’s all nothing to do with this video, which is about the LG X120. Hope you enjoy it!

Well someone commented on the blog video saying I should have done a follow up talking about the actual performance of the unit.

I was reading that thinking, “Well why doesn’t he just watch the NCIX Tech Tips episode about it?”

Oh yeah. I haven’t uploaded it yet… Here it is