Can't decide upon a keyboard and mousemat.

Soldato
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Hey

I'm just about to order my Logitech G7 'carbon' mouse, but can't decide on a matching mousemat and keyboard. I'm moving up from my dieing 2.5 year old Logitch MX desktop combo.

I have moved away from the gimmick of a wirelees keybaord but feel as though moving to a gaming keyboard will prove annoying without the presence of shortcut keys. The choices.

Mousemats:

- Icemat v2 in black - Looks awesome and should be greatr
- Razer exact mat - Have heard many great comments about this.

I don't know which one will be better with the G7, so any comments would be welcome.

Keyboards:

- Saitek eclipse in black - Great price, backlight, and looks good quality.
- Enermax aurora - OOOOOO sooo pretty :D (Does it have short travel keys like a lappy?)
- Logi G15 - expensive and complicated ?

I'm still leaning towards the saitek because of its great price, backlight, and wrist rest, but the enermax looks absolutely stunning and will probably feel it, although it's expensive.

Too many choices :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
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lay-z-boy said:
razer and eclipse, nuff said.

Ta, i think im pretty much decided on the exactmat with the gel rest, but will i need mouse skates or shall i just use it on the bare surface ?

The saitek looks soo good for the price but im worried it'l be crap to type on, and that the aurora might be soo much nicer. But at double the £ i guess it should be.

Someone tell me that the saitek feels good to type on so i don't spend even more money :D
 
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Imy

Imy

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I bought the Saitek Eclipse keyboard and the Razer eXactMat with gel wrist rest.

I gave the wrist rest away as it was a little too tall for me and my hands are a decent size.

The mat is pretty decent, not had any issues with it.

The keyboard was a big disappointment for me I'm afraid to say. Its not exactly cheap for what it is and there's lots of little annoyances with it. The keys are a really ugly dark silver. The back light isn't as good at illuminating the keys as you'd expect. It's USB-only and will not work with a ps/2 adapter. The layout is pretty bog standard with no extra features (I wasn't looking for any personally). The keys are the same you find on £5 keyboards. It won't register more than 2 simultaneous button presses so in fps games you can't use a walk button + move in diagonal direction. You'll be lucky to get it to work in a KVM.
 
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I got a G15 the other week (went from an eclipse) and I am very pleased with it so far. The macro keys are great for games and the lcd comes in usefull as well.

Its on this week only at a great price so out of the three listed I would go for the g15 :)
 
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Imy said:
The keyboard was a big disappointment for me I'm afraid to say. Its not exactly cheap for what it is and there's lots of little annoyances with it. The keys are a really ugly dark silver. The back light isn't as good at illuminating the keys as you'd expect. It's USB-only and will not work with a ps/2 adapter. The layout is pretty bog standard with no extra features (I wasn't looking for any personally). The keys are the same you find on £5 keyboards. It won't register more than 2 simultaneous button presses so in fps games you can't use a walk button + move in diagonal direction. You'll be lucky to get it to work in a KVM.

Woah easy tiger, I think you must have gotten yourself a very dodgy keyboard, as it certainly does work with a ps/2 adaptor in fact they supply one with the keyboard, and it certainly registers 2 buttons in FPS. The illumination is decent enough and I can easily see them at night, as for the keys well thats a matter of personal preference I think the dark silver is quite nice :)
 
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adfinni said:
Ta, i think im pretty much decided on the exactmat with the gel rest, but will i need mouse skates or shall i just use it on the bare surface ?

The saitek looks soo good for the price but im worried it'l be crap to type on, and that the aurora might be soo much nicer. But at double the £ i guess it should be.

Someone tell me that the saitek feels good to type on so i don't spend even more money :D

I have both, i love them to bits along with my copperhead, cant say how nice it is to have decent mice/pads and keyboards.
No need for the skates and the saitek is easy to type on and feels nice, infact im typing in pitch black with the keylight on and apart from looking ace it helps when i screw up my touch typing a bit.
 

Imy

Imy

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Mr Men said:
Woah easy tiger, I think you must have gotten yourself a very dodgy keyboard, as it certainly does work with a ps/2 adaptor in fact they supply one with the keyboard, and it certainly registers 2 buttons in FPS. The illumination is decent enough and I can easily see them at night, as for the keys well thats a matter of personal preference I think the dark silver is quite nice :)

:D

Nothing wrong with the keyboard - it is how its meant to be. No ps/2 adapter was supplied with mine but I tried one I had and it didn't work. This prompted me to give Saitek a call and they confirmed it will not work with a ps/2 adapter.

Yes it does register 2 buttons in fps games, but I said more than 2 :D

And you're right, the rest is just personal preference.
 
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Imy

Imy

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Ok I thought I had better do some more thorough tests with the 'more than 2 keys' problem in fps games.

I tested with Quake III and CS 1.6.

In both games I was using arrow keys for movement and KEYPAD_INS for walk key. I was able to walk when moving forwards, backwards, strafe-left and strafe-right but it didn't work when I tried it in a diagnol direction (i.e. when I had to press 3 keys simultaneously instead of 2).

After further testing it looks like this is only a limited problem. Using other combination of keys will allow you to do 3 simultaneous key presses. Its just a little dodgy with arrow keys/keypad_ins.
 
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The way I play, i constantly have w and a held, tappig d to counter it, also holding tab most the time and pressinf zxc for various instances. I play css, never had a problem.
 
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with the saitek keyboard, the backlighting isnt very effective unless youre looking straight down onto the keys.

if you have a keyboard tray on your desk you should be in a better position to see the keys, but if like me you have the keyboard on the same plane as the monitor the backlighting really doesnt work unless you crane your neck forwards.

of course it still provides a soothing blue glow during early hours ut04 sessions ;)
 
Soldato
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My combo is an eXactmat and an Eclipse :cool:

But tbh, in the end of the day, what one person prefers is different to another. My friend prefers his Copperhead and G15 & Baking tray, i prefer my setup. I know his are better (bar the baking tray) but i still prefer mine because it's what i'm used to :p
 
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I have a black icemat 2 I think it is, it came supplied with teflon feet (theyre little oval pieces of teflon that fit perfectly onto my mx510).

The only issues I can think of are that it picks up dirt very easily, this can lead to the mouse making a scratching sound, its easy to clean with water though.

Also, if youre one to stay at your computer for hours at a time, you may find that the edge of the pad will dig into your wrist, just make sure that you keep your wrist on the pad, the feet on the bottom of the pad do a pretty good job of keeping the pad in place but yeah having the blood supply to your wrist cut off for a long period of time isnt very good.
 
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