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For a couple of years
now, the Razor Boomslang was the product to have.
With an ultra-high dpi and dead-on accuracy, anyone
who was considering taking their gaming to the next
level would have to be equipped with this device.
Sure the optical devices performed better than the
traditional ball tracking mouse, but it still lacked
the accuracy that the Boomslang possessed. Well famous
mouse developer Logitech went back to the drawing
board, and unleashed their next-generation of optical
device in the form of the Mouseman Dual Optical. With
twice the precision and accuracy of the original optical
mouse, the Dual Optical clearly is the mouse that
gamers of all skill levels should invest in.
Upon glancing at the dual optical, Logitech has changed the look and feel of the optical mouse. The dual optical mouseman now sports a futuristic silver coating with a transparent bottom that lights up once you touch the mouse. The mouseman is also slightly curved and elevated, raising the height of the index and middle fingers. The elevation helps for people with long fingers/big hands, as it brings your fingers to an appropriate, yet comfortable position on the mouse clicks. The mouse wheel is also much smoother, so scrolling or weapon switching should no longer be a problem. In addition, a thumb button has been added for additional mouse control. This is probably where its biggest fault of the mouse comes in, because this mouse can only be used by the right hand. Seeing that most mice created nowadays are designed for both hands, I was a bit surprised to see them take such a restrictive route in the design. The dual optical is also a bit heavier than the mouseman optical, almost as heavy as the boomslang 2000.
The previous mouseman
optical featured an 800 dpi sensor. Compared to the
Razor Boomslang 2000, which featured a dpi of 2000,
the optical mouse didn't seem like a good choice.
One would think that to compete, Logitech would just
develop a new mouse that had a higher dpi sensor,
right? Well, instead of following the common trend,
they implement something that is entirely simple,
but the results are so dramatic. And that simple thing
was adding another optical sensor. No one that I am
aware of has even considered going this route except
Logitech, which is somewhat shocking. With two sensors,
the dual optical can track movements at twice the
rate of the previous optical mouseman, while still
maintaining impressive precision and accuracy. Plus,
should one optical sensor happen to leave a suitable
tracking surface, the second senor is right there
to continue your movements without skipping a beat.
With a dpi this high,
the dual optical currently has one true competitor,
and that is the Razor boomslang 2000. But after putting
them through several tests, the dual optical outperforms
the boomslang across the board. The biggest advantage
is Logitech's support for their product. Right now,
no one really knows what's going on with the folks
behind the boomslang. You don't have to worry about
that with Logitech, as they are alive and well, offering
full support for their products. With support comes
drivers, and again the dual optical is the clear-cut
winner. This mainly has to do with Logitech having
"official" stable drivers for the new Windows XP operating
system, while the Boomslang XP drivers are very shaky.
The Razor boomslang also has a tremendous learning
curve to it, partly because of the design of the controller.
With the dual optical, the time it took me to get
the feel of the new mouseman was immediate. I was
kind of stunned, considering many of my colleagues
had mentioned that there was a slight learning curve
with the dual optical.
Though all of these
advantages and disadvantages are nice, they are no
good to anyone if they do translate in the applications
that you are using. For testing, we used a graphic
application, Fireworks MX, as well Quake 3 arena was
used to see how well this mouse-demanding programs
responded to the dual optical. When using Fireworks
MX, you constantly need to do perform touch ups on
small parts of a graphic. When using the boomslang,
I noticed that the mouse was way too sensitive to
perform any minor detailing without zooming in significantly.
When using the dual optical, the mouseman was so accurate
that I was able to perform some per-pixel detailing
without always zooming in and out. This saved me a
lot of time when I needed to do some extensive image
editing. When it comes to quake 3, the results were
even more definitive. But before I go into that, I
want to mention that while I was trying out the dual
optical and boomslang 2000, I noticed that someone
has discovered a bug with XP that doesn't disable
the XP mouse acceleration when in a game. If you have
been using either mouse and were not impressed with
the results, then download
this registry fix. The difference in performance
is like day and night. Now as for performance in Quake
3, because there are two 800 dpi sensors, you get
the performance of a 1600 dpi mouse. Yet the mouse
acceleration is not affected like the boomslang. If
you like to you the railgun, then prepare to be amazed
at how much better you can hit your targets. Of course,
you still need some level of skill to be a true marksman,
but the dual optical pretty much eliminates any technical
bottleneck that was limiting your full potential.
Overall
While the tracking ball
vs. optical war was over a year or two ago, the Boomslang
was still showing that no matter how accurate the
optical was, it could never be as fast as a ball-tracking
mouse. But who would have guessed that by adding an
additional optical sensor, Logitech would have created
a product that leaves all of its competitors in the
dust. With twice the accuracy and speed, the dual
optical mouseman is a product that any serious right-handed
gamer or graphic artist shouldn't be without. It's
amazing to see how the simplest things can sometimes
make the biggest impact.
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