Recently I heard from a user who had spent several weeks putting the Tarantula through its paces. He had created a multitude of key assignments and macros for his favorite games. Rather than simply write about his experiences I made the trek from San Diego to his office in Mission Viejo, California and captured his experiences on camera.

Travis is the office manager at Howie’s Game Shack, a cavernous LAN center located just off the 5 freeway in Mission Viejo. They cater to PC and Xbox games and host a slew of tournaments. Quite a nice place to spend an afternoon I must say. Hopefully hearing the unrehearsed and unedited comments about the features and capabilities of the Tarantula from real people like Travis are helpful to you. Please let me know if you have similar stories and if you’d like Razerguy to pay you a visit to capture those stories on video.

On January 7th at CES in Las Vegas Razer announced and demonstrated for the first time anywhere the Razer Mako 2.1 speaker system. On that same day a press release was sent to all the major wire services where I was quoted as saying …

“Razer’s new line of products being showcased at CES, which include the Razer Mako, Razer DeathAdder, Razer Pro|Type and the Razer Pro|Click Mobile, truly reflect the future of interactive entertainment,” says Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, president, Razer Group.  “We are proud to say that this new product lineup continues to express the originality of our ideas by aggressively pursuing what consumers want in design and engineering. We did not get to where we are today by ‘playing by the rules’; we arrived here by setting them.”

These were my actual words and not some copywriter’s space filler. I was hoping that our fans would view this product in the proper light and not merely pass it off as “oh, a 2.1 speakers system for $300” or “what does Razer know about music speakers”, etc. What I do know is that we have our work cut out for us in altering the prevailing paradigms surrounding what constitutes a desktop speaker system.

Since there is no way for any of you to actually hear these speakers (unless you are planning to stop by our booth at CeBIT) please allow me a bit of space to explain their unique technology. Speaking of which we had the support of those wonderful folks at THX, led by the capable hands of Dr. Laurie Fincham their lead scientist (you can see Dr. Fincham and me shaking hands in the CES images below – he’s the tall, good-looking chap).

The Concept
Okay, we refer to the Mako as “advanced desktop audio” because it takes a problem, sound wave interference due to audio desk-bounce, and turns the surface into a solution by utilizing the desktop as a “soundstage”.

The Technology
Using the patented THX Groundplane for dramatic mid-ranged treble and bass audio the signal fires downward to the patented THX Slot Tweeter for a richer, fuller omni-directional soundstage. The downward firing omni-directional solution provides unparalleled acoustic fidelity found only in high-end audio systems. The two 50W bi-amplified satellites allows louder and expanded audio axial signal before distortion and Class HD™ Digital Amplifier technology featuring full DSP control makes previous generation Class AB and Class D amplifiers obsolete.

The Class HD amplification system of broad co-axial response limits results in higher efficiency curves, improved SNR, EMI, reduced idle consumption and lowered amplifier delays. In other words, crank this baby up! The cool looking all-in-one control pod grants speaker volume control, single-touch mute, headphone jack and an auxiliary input all within easy reach and amplifies the microphone jack for improved headphone performance. Now here’s the real benefit, the unique 360° circular design delivers uniform sounds directly to the user’s ears regardless of position or placement of speakers in your room or on your desk.

What the CES press had to say about the Mako
From John Yan at Gaming Nexus …
“Razer has gotten into the audio arena with a sound card and headphones but they will soon be unleashing a 2.1 speaker system. The Mako is a THX certified setup that THX’s Ground Plate and Slot Speaker technologies. They are circular speakers that allow for omni-directional sound and won’t give you distorted sound at really high levels. Total power of the system is 300W.

A feature of the Mako that’s found in very expensive high end speakers is ClassHD. Class HD scales power in sync with the music, resulting in operation at a much higher efficiency curve, improved Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), improved EMI, reduced idle consumption, and lowered amplifier delay. For adjusting volume and such, the Mako has a nice little puck style control that can lower and raise the volume by sliding your thumb around in a circle that’s similar to how the iPod operates.”

From Jason Cross at PC Magazine …
“High-end gaming speakers for the PC tend to target multi-satellite configurations: 5.1 or 7.1. Razer is bucking the trend with a new set of THX-certified 2.1 speakers for $300. Calling them THX-certified is probably not going far enough, though. Essentially, the speakers were co-designed by Razer and THX engineers trying to solve the problem of sound reflecting off the desk with normal PC speakers. The solution is a special ground plane and slot-speaker technology that fires the speakers downward and reflects sound out a thin slot edge on the side.

How it all works is a bit complicated, and is probably best saved for our eventual full review. It’s a fascinating design, though, and with two 50W amps in each satellite and some really fancy DSP technology, it should sound awesome. It’s all a very interesting package, and could be great news for those who demand awesome sound from their PC but don’t have the room (or spousal approval) to string up rear speakers.”

From Bosco at Overclockers Club …
“The advantage of multimedia and PC speakers is that they can be conveniently positioned on desktops and bookshelves. But, sound reflecting from desktop surfaces interferes with the direct sound, creating uneven frequency response at the listener’s ear level,” said Laurie Fincham, chief scientist at THX. “The Razer Mako 2.1 is the first multimedia speaker system designed from the ground up to provide optimal performance on the desktop. The THX Ground Plane and Slot Speaker technologies ensure the speaker drivers are very close to the desktop surface, doubling the output and delivering smooth and even response at all frequencies."

Lastly Wired Magazine awarded Razer the best of innovation award for CES …
“Designed by engineers from THX, the Razer Mako speakers get props for trying something new: the tweeter and mid-range drivers point down, bouncing sound off a metal plate and out in a halo. It’s not surround sound, but room-filling sound; stand in a corner of the room and your music sounds nearly as full as it does if you were sitting between the two desk-top speaker pods.

We’ll need more controlled testing to know if the Mako lives up to its $300 price tag — especially considering it’s a simple 2.1 get-up — but our time with a prototype unit left us reconsidering the money we’d spent on 5.1 PC speakers (not to mention the hassle we’d gone through running wires to the rears).”

There are many more CES show reviews and product previews, and if you are interested in reading more (and I hope you are), you should Google “Razer Mako” (there’s only 329,000 references).  I think that from this brief introduction you can capture the mood of what we developed, why it is needed and also see our dilemma as to how to clarify or separate it from all other desktop speaker systems. More to come soon as this is at best a projected May delivery product.

Next week on December 9th the mouse will celebrate its 38th birthday. No I’m not referring to that precocious rodent named Mickey; I’m talking about the little guy cradled in your right hand (at least most of us). Since I’m a bit of a history buff I thought it might be interesting to share a little bit of the past with you all.

On that day in 1968 Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart and a group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals.

This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

The original 90-minute video of this event is part of the Engelbart Collection in Special Collections of Stanford University. This original video has been edited into 35 segments and reformatted as RealVideo streaming video clips.

To access any or all of these clips visit http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html.

What we saw in the late 60s has progressed to become a commonly used ball mouse. This was the defacto standard for navigating computer operating systems, at least until the late 90s with the emergence of optical sensors, when accuracy and tracking was taken to the next level. Laser sensor technology made their consumer debut in 2004.

Razer introduced the first high performing mouse in 1999. It clocked at 2000 dots-per-inch and established a new category of mice, Gaming Mice, and a new benchmark for mouse performance, DPI. Razer has always believed in hardware solutions and that performance features such as resolution and speed must be built into the firmware and not interpolated through software or through the magnifying of lenses.

Today we all owe a lot of our enjoyment and gaming pleasure to Dr. Engelbart, who incidentally is the proud owner of one of the original Boomslang and most recently Copperhead mice.

Ah forums, one of my favorite topics. Contrary to some of the recent forum posts, we did not rush this product out to the stores. There is support for drivers and service available via telephone in North America or online through Razerzone to anyone.

The exact same units that we are selling in stores are being reviewed by "professional" people and winning awards (CNET just gave the Tarantula an Editor’s Award today).

New technology products often take a few weeks to work out any potential system conflicts we can’t test for because some components are so new. This is why we make products that allow firmware updating.

The Tarantula has been actively in development for over 2 years. Gamers ask us what we are working on and because we love input we share more information than we probably should from time to time. Then some of you get pissed off because we don’t hit your dream dates? Well, you can’t have it both ways. Razer will ship products when we believe they are ready - not before. We will continue to "communicate" with the gamers who want to know what’s coming. We will continue to seek outside innovation in the form of testing and validating our products.

If you are the type of gamer who prefers the standard design and development of copycat OEM product manufacturers that is your prerogative; but if you are the type of gamer who is looking for an edge in their game then read the reviews, read the hype, talk to your friends and make your own intelligent decision.

Bling-bling

Perhaps you are all missing the point of why we opted for anti-ghosting vs. a lot of bling lighting. We wanted to build the ultimate gaming keyboard and in doing so we placed more emphasis on key binds (chording as many keys as you have fingers), key touch, perfect resistance, lowest possible key latency, quiet keys, etc., etc.

Until you have actually used this keyboard there is no way to compare it to anything else you have ever used.

Because of the anti-ghosting feature every key works on an independent mechanical switch. This makes a great deal of backlighting impossible. We realize that gamers like to play with only the ambient light from their monitor and hardware and therefore we added as much lighting as we possibly could. The BattleLight is a direct lighting tool that will be available as soon as we can get the quality levels perfected and will cast a soft light on the keyboard. It is not a perfect solution for lighting but when I weight the benefits of a very advanced keyboard that allows me enhanced game play and amazing programmability the lighting trade-off is easy to swallow.

Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard Information

Buy direct at the Razer Store.

Looks like the competition is heating up and we have more videos for this week. Check them out…

A frag video

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erAser

Simple!

Send in your gaming videos with you and your Razer in action and you can walkaway with the complete gaming suite. More details here.

Anthony shows us why his Razer pwns!

One click one frag.

BOOM HEADSHOT!

We have lift off as the first Why My Razer Pwns video contest entries arrive. I wanted to share them with you for both your entertainment and to issue a challenge to other Razer fans to create and submit you own videos.

Okay, these are pretty good so far, but man, I know you can do better. Make them bigger, wilder and funnier if you dare.

Comeon dudes, make Razerguy laugh a little (or a lot). This contest is for fun so let’s see how creative you can be.

Czarnobyl.70R

Ode To Razer

Just watch it

skyfire shows you why

Razerguy and MS Hardware guy discuss the partnership between Microsoft and Razer to co-develop and co-brand advanced gaming peripherals, life at the Game Conference and dining opportunities in Leipzig Germany.

Over my last 3 trips to Games Convention in Leipzig and my trips to CeBIT in Hannover the Blueprints gang have attended, interviewed me, helped us with our booth, evaluated new products, brought us gifts and in general made a nuisance of themselves (j/k).

This trip I turned the tables on them and surprised them by whipping out my Handycam and shoving it in their unsuspecting faces. Always being on the receiving end of the camera gets old and I relish the experience of seeing others cringe as I ask the tough questions like “so what did you have for breakfast?”

I thought it was about time to meet three-quarters of the original team (Andy was AWOL). While they are and have always been Razer supporters it is clear that they are objective and certainly have minds of their own when it comes to our products. They are brutally honest and aren’t shy when it comes to criticism. For example, just last week they told me that my hair looked like shit.

Check out the video below

They are university students who love gaming. They reside in and around Cologne Germany with Alex, or Dark Peanut, living about 2 hours away in Karlsruhe, wherever that is???

Over the past 4, or is it 5 years now?, they have developed and grown the Razer Blueprints site to great proportions. It has become the gold standard for inside scoop, fixes, tweaks and forums for all Razer products. Without this dynamic quartet I doubt if Razer would half as successful as we are today. I say that with the knowledge of just how important this community is and how loyal fans can be.

Our undying thanks go out to the Blueprints team and for everyone who loyally posts and contributes to their site. Love us or hate us we respect you all.

Peace and good gaming