Has anyone out there seen any of my recent Razerguy Video Blogs? Okay, so I wasn’t made for YouTube … hey, it’s not easy being me. Think you can do better? Be more creative? Win gobs of Razer products in the works? We got a new video competition kicking off for all our Razer members today so pump up those creative juices and let your ideas rip.

To take part in one of the most insane Razer competitions yet just go to our contest page and check out the requirements. Do about anything but don’t hurt yourself or the family pet; show us your stuff and we’ll feature your video on our site as well as send you a “fun pack” of Razer arsenal. Final winners will become Razer directors and receive suites of Razer products. Besides I want to get the opportunity to laugh at you too. Cheers and have fun.

The word is out and yesterday I received a record, inbox choking 1223 emails from gamers around the world asking for more information about the joint-product introduction of the HABU mouse.

I wanted to use my blog as a fast method to clarify some early misconceptions.

First, the HABU mouse was designed from the ground up for low sensitivity, fast hand movement players. The ID is based on the original IE 3.0 with several design tweaks and (we think) improvements.

If you liked the original IE 3.0, you’ll like the Habu even better with pretty much the same shape with better tracking. The recent re-release of the IE 3.0 has caused some confusion out there so here it is – the re-released IE 3.0 is essentially the same mouse as it was in 1999 with the same sensor while the Habu has pretty much the same shape (with some Razer ergo tweaks and improvements) and our kick-ass updated laser sensor.

The HABU does NOT replace the Copperhead. While the laser sensor is basically the same, there have been several engineering tweaks designed to aid the performance for low sensitivity or glide play style settings. If you’re a flicker, you’re better off with the Copperhead.

You can’t be all mice to all people and we’re building different mice with different shapes to fit different play styles for all you gamers out there. The Habu and Copperhead are the cutting edge gaming mice out there – if you love the Copperhead and the playstyle associated with it, don’t get the Habu and vice versa.

Neither Microsoft or Razer planned to make this mouse … it was mandated by gamers who specifically wrote both companies and begged us to make it. This product is for you!

The design structure, along with the advanced technical specifications of the HABU is developed to gain the maximum movement, comfort, precision, speed and control possible.

If you are trying to decide which mouse is right for your game you might want to use the following as a guide

Features	Habu	Copperhead
Palm grip	X
Fingertip grip		X
Flick Play Style		X
Glide Play Style	X
Right handed	X	X
Left handed		X
Light weight mouse		X
Heavier weight mouse	X
32kb Onboard Memory	X	X

For herpetologists everywhere the HABU is a pit viper snake is a poisonous snake found in Japan, Philippines, Taiwan, southeast China. For the past 8 years Razer has named all of their mouse products after predatory snakes, beginning with the Boomslang.

Over the years Razer has sponsored about a zillion LAN parties and we normally don’t make a big deal of this or feature them on our site. That said I wanted to make an exception and blog about a recent LAN that we were one of the sponsors … I have strong feelings about what they did.

The guys and gals at Pure Adrenalin Gaming went beyond fun, community and competition and donated the proceeds from the PAGLAN event to local charity.

It’s one thing to recognize and reward gamers and their friends by hosting great local events, and while Razer certainly applauds and supports all LANs, it’s really cool to donate your time, money and hard work to a worthy cause. Let’s hope that other organizers, large and small, and even big leagues and event organizers read this and jump on the bandwagon.

Beyond our sponsoring events like this, in a few weeks I’ll be reporting on what Razer is doing to support worthy charities and how you can be a part of it.

If your group is planning a charitable gaming event please write me in advance – we want to be a part of the positive side of our community.

Well, at least we love Hannover, which is where we spent a long and snowy German springtime at the consumer/electronics/gaming expo known worldwide as CeBIT.

This is the second year that Razer has had a large booth in one of the 30+ massive exhibition halls at CeBIT. With the memory of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still in our heads, what was crystal clear is how CeBIT completely dwarfs CES. This expo is one big mama and it takes the full week it runs to walk all the massive halls.

On March 9th we opened our portion of the expo by announcing to the world our new audio product, Barracuda IAS (Integrated Audio Solution). From that day on our booth was mobbed by European press, distributors, retailers and customers and Razer fans … everyone wanting to see the demonstration of the new audio product. I will post another blog in a few days to provide more details on and the story behind the Barracuda IAS.

Besides seeing the hourly Barracuda IAS show and demonstration, attendees viewed the upcoming Razer Tarantula Keyboard, or they could test drive a Copperhead and a Mantis mousing surface on one of our many PC’s.

The Razer booth babes, er I mean greeters, handed out Razer lanyards, shopping bags and rub off tattoos. If they look familiar they were the same “greeters” from last year’s Game Conference in Leipzig. Troopers that they are they drove from Leipzig to Hanover, a 4 1/2 hour drive the morning of the first day of the expo in the dark and in the snow.

Besides the usual rub-off Razer tattoos we had a extraordinary air brush tattoo artist and as you can see by the photos there were many Razer mobsters who availed themselves of his services. Some of the unique places he applied his craft were R-rated and cannot be shared in mixed company.

It is customary for these expos to sequester Razerguy in a press room giving interviews for Barracuda and Tarantula and I missed most of the fun on the exhibit floor. I was even too late to get an air brush tattoo (sob-sob). I guess I’ll have to hold out for the real thing (I hope my wife doesn’t read this blog).

One of the coolest things at the booth (the entire expo for that matter) was one of our gamer friends, Renkie a.k.a. The Blindguy
(no relation to Razerguy) who was demonstrating the remarkable positional audio of the Barracuda IAS. He was in fact playing “blind” (as in not being able to see his opponent on his screen) and competing via sound only. He took on all comers. On day one we offered a Razer Diamondback and other prizes for anyone who could beat him. After the first day we offered a prize for anyone who could get a frag off of him. Due in part to the audio positioning of the Barracuda and his amazing (freaky) skillz, he went undefeated for the entire week. He was even challenged by a few pro gamers from the WCG tournament. Results: 16-zip. Pwnership, ouch.

Many thanks to our Hamburg office staff for pulling this all together and to our wonderful main European distributor Jöllenbeck for all their support (they are the best!). A very special thank you to Celeste from our Singapore office who takes good care of Razerguy and makes certain that I take my vitamins.

And to all of our friends and fans (esp. the Blueprints guys) major thanks for stopping by and supporting us. Hope to see many of you at E3 in Los Angeles in May and our German gamers in Leipzig at GC in August 21-23.

Here’s a recent press release from the CES show:

Razer takes delivery of
KickButtComputers.com Copperhead Tribute Theme at CES 2006.

Razer - www.razerzone.com - the leading manufacture of gaming peripherals met with KickButtComputers.com on January 5, 2006 at CES Show Stoppers and takes delivery of the long awaited Copperhead Tribute Theme developed and produced by KickButtComputers.com in honor of Razer’s release of the Copperhead programmable laser mouse. Razer’s President “RazerGuy” goes to Show Stoppers and meets with the KickButt crew to take delivery of the system which went through 2 1/2 months of research and development and was completed 10 days prior to the show.

Copperhead Theme esthetically features pure copper panels with a snake skin texture that have a copperhead snake head on one side and Razer’s uniquely identifiable 3 headed snake and Razer brand logo on the top panel precision cut out of the copper panels. The top panel also features acrylic inlay offsets with light illuminating in Razer’s logo color of fluorescent acid green. Adorning the front face of the computer is an actual copperhead head produced by a reptilian taxidermist. Technically the system spares no expense either and boasts a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition Dual Core processor, 2GB of 667Mhz DDR2 RAM, Western Digital 300GB SATA150 hard drive and NVidia 7800GTX 256MB video card.

"”This computer looks awesome and we are glad to be taking delivery of it” said RazerGuy. KickButtComputers.com spokesman stated that they felt confident that the system captured not only the essence of the Razer branding but the Copperhead theme as well. “We love the way this turned out and have plans to do future 1-ups and tribute themes for Razer and other companies” said Jer Plummer, spokesman for the company.

You can see all of the cool products of the 2 companies at www.razerzone.com and KickButtComputers.com, truly a must see for the computer enthusiast.

Sorry to take so long to post this ultra sweet fan-based info. The guys at KickbuttComputers approached me some months ago and asked if we were interested in developing a Copperhead case mod. They were approaching this as fans and friends of Razer and we said that we were flattered and to go for it.

As Razer grows as a company there is more and more attention paid by management to protect our intellectual properties. We constantly waiver between loving the cool things that fans develop using our logo and concerns over protecting our copyrighted brands and images. We are trying very hard not to wind up as big stick-in-the-mud corporate suits.

Now in allowing the great guys at KickbuttComputers free reign using our intellectual properties I’m sure I violated some major corporate laws and I’m probably wanted in 14 states, but WTF it came out really cool and it is a great conversation piece.

Now what you have to understand is that 1) this was developed by Razer fan for fun, 2) it is not available from Razer for resale and 3) I get to keep my parking space for at least another month.

Enjoy the images and if you’re interested in more info contact those very cool dudes at http://www.kickbuttcomputers.com.

Earlier this month the Razer team descended upon the Las Vegas Convention Center and set up shop at one of the world’s largest consumer electronics shows, CES.

The highlight of the show for us came in the form of a nomination for Best of CES product award for the Tarantula keyboard. The field of new products for this event runs into the thousands and to have a Razer product nominated given the competition from multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporations was to say the least exalting. Given the fact that no other keyboard received a nomination was also interesting … keyboards historically just aren’t that different or sexy and rarely receive recognition of interest.

We presented partially working models for both Razer’s gaming and Pro|Solutions brands. These are products in the final stages of development and are not due to reach the retail markets until this spring.

Best of CES 2006 awards.

We lost. And to a very worthy opponent - NVIDIA with their quad SLI solution. In a nutshell, it sucks to lose and even though we knew that we didn’t win the award before the presentation was made (CNET would pre-empt the winners), there was still a pang of disappointment when NVIDIA was announced and not us. So this really sucked - I’ve often said that being second is as good as losing and I suppose this was a clear indication of that - we didn’t win - so we were the losers.

However, on the flip side, we were the finalists - right up there with all the billion dollar companies who were the finalists - Sony, Samsung, Intel, Creative, Pioneer, Panasonic, Toshiba, Palm, Dell, etc. And it was odd to have our tiny motley crew toe to toe with some of the biggest companies in the world. We were probably the tiniest guys in a field of companies hundreds of times bigger than us, in terms of business and people. And yet we were on par with the best of them - In a field of thousands and thousands of new products by huge mega-corporations at the CES Show, ours stood up as one of the best of the show - that’s something to be applauded.

Great video reviews!

Razer Tarantula CNET Review - http://www.cnet.com/Razer_Tarantula/4660-11405_1-6413258.html?tag=vid

Razer Copperhead CNET Review: http://www.cnet.com/Razer_Copperhead_precision_gaming_mouse/4660-11405_1-6412594.html?tag=vid

The buzz around the Razer booth was extraordinary. The Brazilian gamers could not believe they were seeing the Mantis speed and control so soon after the U.S. launch. They were very excited to finally see and purchase the Copperhead (many purchased and then went immediately to the contest area).

Sout, one of the top CS source teams in Brazil used the Mantis in the semi’s and finals of the CS-Source tournament, ultimately finishing 2nd. Every morning as the show opened, Thousands waited in line patiently to enter the show. Most made a beeline to the Razer booth to hop on one of the multiple gaming stations and to try their hand at quake 4 using the new Copperhead / Mantis combination.

I’m not sure what the fans were more impressed with. The Quake 4 graphics or just how smooth and precise the new copperhead is.

People were impressed with our booth, not because of booth beauty but because of new products, new technologies, the first brand appearance in Brazil, etc…
Razer was the highlight of the show, like a new girl when goes to party and steals all the attention. We could hear people saying:

“Man look, Razer is here…!!!!! “ or
“Finally we can buy Razer in Brazil …!” or
“Man, look at that mouse, I wish I could buy one…” or
“How can you launch the new Mantis in Brazil if we can’t find anywhere in USA?”

Everybody was impressed with the Copperhead features. When we were explaining the features we could see the smile on their faces and almost hear his thoughts as: “oh shit, this is THE MOUSE, this is a dream”

Competitive Gaming for the country and Razer is a huge opportunity. Nearly every team came to us asking for sponsorship. Copperhead has been sent to editors of review websites and magazines. Other major brands came to us asking for a partnership in Brazil and all kinds of gaming associations are still contacting me for future partnership in tournaments.

The Razer fans took tattooing to a whole new level. Every inch of visible skin covered with our Razer 3-headed snake. We haven’t seen anything like this since GC in Leipzig … guys were placing tattoos on their ass and showing them in public!!! How can someone have his face full of tattoos just to get a dog tag or a beanie? Crazy but also impressed.

There was a funny situation in the sales booth, a little boy came to me and said: “look, my grandma gave me R$ 280 to come here, I want to buy a Diamondback, I need money to eat and money to take a bus back to my city (we were selling the diamond back for R$ 279). Can you make the Diamondback for R$ 259? So I can spend R$ 10 in a lunch and R$ 10 in a bus to go back home…” Of course I said YES!! He was only 14 years old and this situation was very strange but comfortable to me, this proves that the product is now accepted and that we can build a nice business in Brazil.

Many thanks to Cameron Taylor, Joe and Vitor Martins for making this all possible and for their report and images.

I wanted to clarify some misconceptions in the press and on many of the forums regarding the conflicts between the new Agilent Laser Sensor and just about any rough surface mouse mat. An excellent example is this post on CoolTechZone published November 9 (as I write this it is November 11). Here’s the post:

Back when we published our review of the Logitech G7 laser mouse, we received quite a few e-mails from concerned readers who said that we had failed to find the main drawback in G7. All e-mails suggested that G7 (and G5), which are both based on the latest laser technology (an upgrade from optical) fail to work on all surfaces. Clearly, we wanted to replicate the issue internally, but unfortunately, after working with five mousepads from five manufacturers, we simply couldn’t get the mouse to not work in our lab. The interesting thing was, however, that some e-mails we received linked us to Logitech’s technical support forums, which had a decent number of threads that discussed this particular issue.

Now the interesting thing to point out is that Razer Copperhead also uses the same laser technology as Logitech, but Razer fixed this issue by allocating more power to the laser by issuing a firmware upgrade. When we recommended Logitech to do the same, the company said it’s still working with mousepad manufacturers to solve the problem in their future products, and it’s still tracking surface problems in regards to the overall technology and its implementation. With that said, Logitech said it’s not interested in issuing a firmware upgrade that could negate the quality of their products; the company could also have problems with warranties and other such things. However, Logitech might consider the firmware upgrade in the future if the need arises, but unfortunately at this point, Logitech will not issue a firmware upgrade.

Okay, this report is not accurate. We did not "increase the laser power" (there are eye safety issues involved). We just use different settings that are more tuned to the current generation of mousepads (with the option of fine tuned settings for our upcoming laser edition pads).

The Copperhead’s unique ability to upgrade the firmware is another Razer first, just like our ultra-high resolution and our on-the-fly sensitivity technologies. We only make products for gamers and all of our engineering and product development focuses on enhancing the gaming experience.

Those of you who follow this blog by now have learned that I prefer not to hype Razer products. God knows that there are enough places for that.

I like to openly discuss the virtues of gaming as entertainment, sport and leisure. I like to take you on my travels to fun places and events. I enjoy hearing back from you as friends and critics.

I do moderate replies but have rarely edited or dumped any, even if they have been critical of Razer. I have dumped a few for obscenities and there is no need to subject everyone to a few select vulgarities.

I did want to inform you of a couple of new products coming soon. I wanted you to be aware of the facts behind them and in particular our strategy regarding Pro-Tools.

First I’d like to tell you about our Mantis product coming later this month. While the main story is about the oversized cloth mousing pad, it’s actually two products and most of you will be tested to choose the absolute right surface for your specific needs.

What we have done is to take the best of the award-winning eXactMat surface and make it into a 14”x17”x1/8” oversized cloth surface. Unlike its hard mat brother the Mantis cannot be done two-sided. Hence the needs for the decision … SPEED or CONTROL?

Trust me the two surfaces are very different from each other. The SPEED Mantis is lightening smooth and made for high sensitivity play. Game genres like FPS, action-adventure types were what we had in mind when we began development.

Alternatively, the CONTROL Mantis offers grainy “denim” feel to it and has been designed for low sens users. This would include the majority of Counter Strike, RTS and MMORPG players. This is an ultra-precise surface that professional precision users will like for apps like PhotoShop, Illustrator and parametric design programs.

Buy Both? They will retail at $24.99 for either SPEED or CONTROL models and as a special offer to Razer supporters we will offer the pair for the first 30-days only for $39.99 a $10 savings. More details on the Razerzone store in the days to come.

Next is the new eXactMat Laser. We have been testing advanced hard surfaces that are better “tuned” to the laser sensor of the Copperhead mouse … or any other laser mouse (you know who I mean). Just like its big brother the eXactMat Optical it will be constructed from near bullet-proof anodized aluminum.

In a few short weeks we will be introducing this new Razer eXactMat Laser edition. If you are in the market for the ultimate hard mat for your laser mouse I suggest you wait a few weeks before you purchase. In our pad tests we noted that many of the well-known and best optical performing mats didn’t track well when using any laser sensor … including our own. Since then we have been hard at work developing the ultimate surface. Stay tuned for more info.

Razer Pro-Tools is coming in November. You may have read about this product and there is some controversy over it so allow me to clear the air and explain why we did what we did.

a) We had explored the possibility of customizable weights from the outset - in fact we had announced this before the competition did so it’s not an issue of sour grapes. However, the problem with adjustable weights via a separate tool would result in what we called "structural jitter". Try picking up a mouse with adjustable weights from one of our competitors and shake it, you’ll feel (hear even) the weights shifting around inside. Not conducive for fast action gaming and definitely not for low sensors who swipe the mouse.

b) Any true changes to the buttons and internals would require the mouse to be opened and this should only be for very advanced users. All of this will increase cost of the mouse dramatically and we had taken the decision not to pass on the cost of this to the gamers as MOST would not want to customize their mouse. It’s like not everyone wants to soup up their machine.

c) The nature of the pro-tools is for high end, advanced modders who want to tweak and change their mouse. As there are advanced tweaks involved, this would mean that any changes would void the warranty of the mouse - it’s not for everyone, only the most discerning of gamers who want to change specific items that most gamers don’t need to.

Here’s what Razer Pro-Tools kit will consist of:

1x Custom case
1x set blank buttons
1x set weights (5g/10g/15g)
2x set replacement feet
1x screwdriver
Plus a free LANpak

If purchased separately you would have to spend over $30 for all of this …
The retail price will be $14.99. More to come on this later.