Domini's Journal: High End Gaming Mice ( I recommend Razer Diamondback)

Having been playing Quake 3 competitively for some time I have found cordless mice to have many problems, some of which can be overcome.

The biggest problem is the fact that most cordless mice (Logitech and MS) had a small 'glitch' in transmitting movement information when a button gets pressed. This becomes quite obvious in quake with the left mouse button bound to jump and when you try and do any movement tricks such as circle jumping and strafe jumping.
This can be solved to a large degree by switching jump to the keyboard (spacebar).
Then there is the problem of losing your connection and battery problems. But by far is the limitation AFAIK that all cordless mice have a sampling rate of only 50Hz (wireless) / 85Hz (bluetooth).

Secondly you need a mouse sampling rate which is at least equal to your monitor refresh (and also your in-game screen update fps) For most games this would be 80fps (For those who think 25-30 or 60 is fine... read up on this at your own leisure) The max I find to be useful is 120 Hz video refresh with at least that in the game FPS and mouse sampling rate. PS2 mice can be tweaked in win2000/XP to be 200 and USB mice are mosly around 125 and cannot be tweaked. (I run everything at around or above 120 if possible).

Then there is also your mouse DPI...
In this field the Boomslang mice range was pretty good, but they were mechanical and the ball sometimes got stuck. For optical the new Boomslang mice are superior, but the Logitech are adequate when it comes to DPI, especially the Dual Optical or MX range, being around 800dpi per sensor for most high-end ones. (The only thing going for MS mice are that they are cheap) The boomslang optical is around 1400 DPI as far as I can remember. (It is also said that the Razer (boomslang) mouse drivers work for the Logitech Dual optical and MX series with only a minor tweak in the INF file, and are superior in most respects.)

An important point to note at this stage is that the Logitech mice are not really 800 DPI, and it's only due to a tweak in the drivers that a 800-like performance is reached.

DPI makes a huge difference whether you are a low or high sens (sensitivity) player. Most people prefer playing with low or no mouse accelleration, to improve accuracy and high sens or with acceleration for movement accuracy. A big problem with MS mice is that a rapid movement to the side will cause the mouse to lose tracking, and may very well point you up and down! This is fatal and irritating. Older Logitech mice tend to just lose tracking and stop moving. This is still acceptable. The newer logitech mice can handle a much greater movement rate without fail. A huge bonus.

This last point is the third major criteria: tracking.
This is measured in deviation/m/s... from what I can tell the new Logitech MX series version X1X seem to do well. The best being the MX 510 in my opinion. Microsoft does not even bother providing these details, and thus points out their lack of focus in this regard.

About the MX1000 Lazer Mouse:
A friend of mine bought one yesterday, and I tried it out.

The cool thing about this mouse is it's AMAZING tracking... It's a bull%^&* argument from Logitech that it's for CAD and businessmen only! What do they ever need to move it at great speeds for?

They say it was not designed for games... I say they designed it NOT for Games. I don't see why they would have put this 'feature' in.

Oh, yes... it's not the lazer powersaving etc... on a B/W IR camera you can see the Lazer only going into powersave more after 15 seconds!

I've got an MX510 and so far it's the best all-round mouse, and even it does not compare to the exquisite tracking (meters/second) of this lazer mouse. Firstly you need all excelleration OFF, then in a game, more it FAST to one side, and then back the exact same point... and voilla... you are there! What executive needs this!!!?

I'm a low sens player, which mean that my movement is flowing and I pack an average of 45% rail accuracy in Quake... this mouse if really good with accuracy, but if they just left the sensor on while picked up, then it would make moving actuallt plausible... since like most low sens players I use a huge mouse pad, and pick up my mouse constantly which makes this mouse unusable... all they needed to do was to keep the sensor on for a bit longer!!!

I then tried playing it as high-sense, and it does become a bit easier to use, since most high sens players hardly ever need to lift the mouse... it becomes bareable in this mode, but still not good enough.

I'm sure this mouse should be 'hackable' with some solder etc.... which would then make it the ultimate... I love the fact that they made it work at 125 unlike ALL the other corless mice.

PS: On another topic, the whole mirror thing. The mouse is obviously outside the visible spectrum, and thus the 'mirror' may not be as mirror-like at those frequencies and may or may not work... hence the Box disclaimer... Just my 2c

Any comments welcome. As a low sens player I may not have encountered most bugs.

Some stats on my Quake (for those who play seriously)... Can complete any Quake 3 level on Nightware (Xaero is a problem but can be beaten) Have a 60% rocket and 40% rail accuracy against medium real players(OSP/RA). Can do rocket launcer platform to rail gun platform jump (no rocket/plasma jumping used) on Q3DM6.
(But I suck at rocket jumping since I switched to space-bar jumping and low sens does not help...)

PS: Settings in quake to try:
  in_mouse 1/-1 (then in_restart)
  com_maxfps 125
  r_displayrefresh (then vid_restart)
  m_filter 0/1
  sensitivity (I use 3-8 depending on OS)
  r_mouseAccel 0/0.5 (depends on 1v1 or FFA)