Razer Tarantula Review

Introduction

Ideazon?s Merc gaming keyboard remains my current favorite while playing games. Combining the big keys and designs of a gaming pad with a fairly standard work keyboard layout has worked out very well. I can type reviews and previews on the keyboard during the day and shoot virtual terrorists in the head at night with the oversized movement keys and well placed buttons on the left side.

So when gaming mouse company Razer first announced their plans for their entry into gaming keyboard with the Tarantula I was more than intrigued. I?m a big fan of their gaming mice products and even though their recent headphone recently was a little bit disappointing I was looking forward to seeing what they would do for gaming keyboards. After all, a mouse is basically a PC input product so creating a companion keyboard would be a natural fit. When I actually got a chance to use Razer?s Tarantula, however, it was something of a surprise. It was more than what I was expecting from the company?and also a little less. That?s confusing, I?m sure but stay with me; it will all make sense.

The first think I quickly noticed about the Tarantula was its size. It?s a big one. It?s not quite as long as the Merc keyboard (20 inches to the Merc?s 21 inches) but it still takes up more desktop space because the Razer is wider than the Merc. It?s also very, very black with a shiny hard plastic finish that makes you be very careful while handling the product. You just don?t want to scratch it at all.

Unlike the Merc, the Razer Tarantula doesn?t really have a dedicated section devoted to just gaming buttons. Indeed the keyboard layout is pretty conventional for the most part but there are some interesting differences. The main one is the 10 keys (5 on the left and 5 on the right of the main keyboard layout) that are specifically made for the Tarantula?s macro set up (more on how that works later). Those buttons along with the Razer logo on the bottom center of the Tarantula, have an electric blue light glow coming from them that gives the keyboard an eerie presence to it in the dark, much like Razer?s Diamondback mouse. There doesn?t seem to be a way to disable the glow, however.

Installing the Tarantula may give you a bit of a fright at first since Razer is requiring you plug in two included USB cable connections in order for the keyboard to work (it?s possible that the reason for this is that glowing light effect takes up a lot of energy but we don?t know that for certain). Thankfully the Tarantula makes up for it by providing for two on-board USB ports that are placed on the top right hand side of the keyboard which is perfect for plugging in your mouse and whatever other USB device you might want (alas these ports are only USB 1.1 and not 2.0 ports). The USB cables also come with headset and microphone cables as well. If you plug both of them into the appropriate openings on your soundcard you can then plug in your headphone-microphone combo into the keyboard itself through the use of two such ports located next to the keyboard?s two USB ports.

View the original article here

Book Review: Essential C# 3.0

I haven�t posted a book review here before, but that�s because no-one has sent me a pre-release draft manuscript to review before! So here it is, a review of Essential C# 3.0 by Mark Michaelis.

To skip to the chase, I like this book a lot. My personal C# level is Intermediate: although I was on the C# team for many years, I did close to zero C# coding as I worked on the debugger, which was entirely written in C++. Ironically once I left the team I did a lot more, and these days I am doing it daily. The book aims for a range of users, from beginners to advanced, but its hard for me to vouch how useful it is for either of those extremes. I can tell you that for Intermediates it is great.

The book is easy to read, and labels specific sections as Beginners (which I mostly speed-read through) and as Advanced (which I usually read carefully). Something I particularly liked is the way it described the C# changes from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 for each area: even though many of the 3.0 changes occurred while I was on the C# team, I never got the chance to really use them, and the book managed to remind me of lesser-used C# 2.0 features that I had plain forgotten (like nullable types).

I am not a big fan of the MSDN web site, in fact it drives me crazy almost every day I use it, and it especially drives me crazy when I am trying to find C# things. Before this book, delegates were my biggest C# bugaboo: I could never get the syntax quite right, and I�d go off and look at other folks code in our project and try to copy what they did, and I�d eventually get something that compiled. It turns out that one of the reasons I was confused is that the syntax has evolved over the C# versions, and our project uses pretty much all of them, depending I think on the author and when the code was written. I really loved Chapter 12, which is all about delegates, and after reading the book I managed to write some new delegate code without so much as a compiler error. It also taught me how to read and write the new 3.0 syntax for lamda expressions, and although I can�t say I can do those right first time, I can at least read them and get one of my own to compile in a few tries: a great improvement.

The book doesn�t try to cover the myriad of .NET Framework features, and sticks just to the basics like Object, Collections and some on Threads. That suits me just fine, MSDN is just-about-usable when it comes to Framework documentation.

The book is not perfect: each chapter starts with a Mind Map, which is a star-shaped diagram that attempts to explain the contents of the following chapter: it was meaningless to me. Its coverage of platform invoke is also lacking, especially in marshalling and pointer handling, and that is one area that MSDN is particularly poor so I usually resort to internet-wide searches for answers to my issues in that area. The chapter on Query Expressions I found hard going after a while, but I think that is due to the subject matter and my mind, not the book. Once I actually start using LINQ I�m sure a revisiting of the Chapter 15 will make a lot more sense the second time around.

Once I finished reading it at home I took it to the office to use as a general reference work, but immediately discovered a disadvtange of getting a free pre-release copy: there was no index! I see a future for lots of those little colored tabs on my copy, until I shell out for a real one. Although it was a draft, I saw no obvious typos or technical errors, something that I can�t say for a recent Microsoft Press book I bought, which had an embarassment of typos that a simple spell-check should have caught.

In summary I like this book a lot: its level suited my skill set perfectly, and it taught me a bunch of new things as well as reminding me of a few forgotten gems. It will take its place on my desk at work as the first place I turn to for C# information. Once I get those colored tabs in place�

View the original article here

Aliens vs Predator PC Review

Rebellion made FPS history in the early 90s when they created Alien vs. Predator for the Atari Jaguar console. While the crossover of these two science fiction franchises had already become commonplace in many mediums, the idea of a game with an amalgamation of different races, each with their own distinct play style, was nearly unheard of. Even today, such a thing scarcely exists outside of the real-time strategy genre, where StarCraft made its mark in much the same way.

The developer rehashed and refined its unique concept for the PC and Mac with 1999

View the Original article

Command and Conquer 4 Review

Introduction

15 years after the Scrin invaded Earth, Tiberium has continued to spread across the planet at a rate that will render it uninhabitable within a few years. Humanity is on the brink of extinction, and Kane approaches the GDI to propose an alliance in hopes that the two factions can work together to avert the crisis. Using the Tacitus, an ancient relic containing knowledge of untold alien technologies, he plans to construct a Tiberium Control Network that could be used to halt and even reverse the spread of the extraterrestrial substance. Even with TCN nodes nearing completion, extremist activity on both sides causes a breakdown of diplomatic relations, resulting in the end of the alliance and the beginning of the Fourth Tiberium War...



View the Original article

Metro 2033 Review

Introduction

Meet Artyom. Born just before the war that virtually annihilated the planet, he grew up knowing nothing beyond his metro station home except what could be seen on a handful of postcards. The subway system beneath Moscow was one of the largest and busiest in the world, but now it is the only refuge for the scant survivors in the region. Mutated creatures prowl the irradiated surface, but it is not entirely uncommon for them to venture into the bowels of the city. A new breed of sentient beings called Homo Novus or, more commonly, Dark Ones, have been stirring the monsters into a frenzy. Little is known of these creatures, except that encounters with them have resulted in the melting of men

View the Original article

Grand Theft Auto Episodes from Liberty City Review

Introduction

Rockstar North has been the driving force behind the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto series for more than a decade. It achieved its first mainstream success in 2001 when GTA III made the transition to 3D on the Playstation 2. Due to the game

View the Original article