The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

You gotta watch that CREAKY fella... he'll tease ye with these good deals and then you realize the little git is in the UK. hehehee.

I like those keyboards too!! I've only found something similar in Logitech around me little township.

Linky to K300 Logitech keyboard

 

The Saitek Eclipse or Eclipse II are absolutely barebones QWERTY keyboards with only volume controls. Backlit in a variety of colors(depending on the board you buy), slim form factor, nice quality, and reasonable price. I have both the red and blue Eclipse Is and I have no intention of replacing them. Except maybe with Eclipse IIs which are the same but nicer

Not only that but ended up cheaper from Newegg WITH shipping than from Best Buy the next town over.

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys. One thing I did like about the Razer was that the back lighting came only through the key (or that's how it looked in the pictures), not sure I'd like having light seep through between keys like the eclipse I/II and K300 appear to. They are cheap though, and get good quiet and reliability reviews....going to have to think this over lol.

 

Looking at new wireless mouse and keyboard myself. My brother needs one. Thought I might pick one up for christmas for him. His RF keyboard/mouse really sucks! Mine does AT LEAST 12 Feet without hitch. Where as his, doesn't like being more than 6-9Ft away. Looks like blue tooth is generally ok with 15-30Ft. But blue tooth is rather expensive. Unless you go used on amazon/ebay. Ahh convenience. It's always expensive, isn't it

Such a shame it's not easy to increase the gain on the Radio signal coming from the keyboard/Mouse. I'm sure the FCC would NOT approve LOL! But come on! 12-15Ft is a joke. What if your laying back on a couch 20Ft away darn it. We need a few more feet...

 

Here's something I came across, that happened right under our noses and no one even noticed. It looks for all the world like M$ struck some sort of deal, with at least Toshiba to build laptops that can't be used with XP. I have a Satellite A205-S5847 that I installed a new HDD in and it will go through the XP install process until windows starts, and then can't see the HDD. The drive shows in the set-up!

I came across a bunch of suggestions on how to fix the problem, but so far, none of them work, including the latest XP-Pro/SP3. The Sata Drive controller has a custom driver, which you have to select "Other Controller" to even see, with Data Lifeguard!

Meanwhile, Toshiba is offering all these Win 7 Upgrades and drivers for the whole A205 series. This A205 is only 1 year old, and there's no drivers or support for XP at all! Only vista and Win 7! It just doesn't smell right! Toshiba was one of the companies suing M$!

You can go to the Global site and download 36 XP downloads for the A205, but I'm getting a little too old to try and figure out which file does what, and which one turns on the Sata controller at boot-up. I used to love hacking stuff like that years ago, but it takes so damn long, most times. I've seen some that were like Root-Tips, where the needed driver was a sum of their individual parts! No thanks, I'll leave that one to a younger generation! LOL!!

Russ

 

I used the Eclipse II keyboards before, I've had two of them, and I've had the Cyborg as well. The Eclipse II keyboards are alright, but they don't have the lasting quality of cheaper keyboards. A lot of the people I know who own them suffer certain keys not working properly, and as for the Cyborg, it literally started falling apart in my hands. Based on the quality of the Razer Tarantula by comparison, the Lycosa will probably be a better bet. I just hope with the Lycosa they fixed the double-hit key problem. Haallfff Mmyy sseenntencesssss looook like this someetimes (though nowhere near as bad as that)

Russ: Are you sure that's the explanation for it? I do know that Toshiba make drives that only work with very specific controllers. Take the Xbox 360 for example, the DVD drives in many of those are Toshiba/Samsung alliance drives, and they will only work with one VIA S-ATA chipset in order to be seen by a PC, nothing else. Of course, there's only one reason you'd need to use the drive in a PC, which is to put custom firmware on it. Sadly, laptop manufacturers are perfectly within their right to only produce drivers for something for Win7 and Vista. You must remember the days when Vista first came out and all the laptop users tried to "upgrade" back to XP only to find there were no drivers...
It wouldn't however surprise me to know that Toshiba would play a part in an MS scheme, since the companies have had several workings in the past. They were both major HD-DVD players, and the MS Zune was developed from the Toshiba Gigabeat MP3 player, which MS even designed the software for (and funnily, the software for it was awful)

 

Since my computer doesn't have bluetooth I didn't consider it, maybe they come with adapters or something to fix that problem. RF will probably work just fine for me as I doubt I'll ever get farther then 3ft from my system lol.

oman7, you can boost the RF signal on your mouse/keyboard to about 30ft pretty safely. Chances are you won't cause problems for anyone but yourself, if any at all.

I've had a chance to use a cyborg for a while and I would agree with you, it felt cheap and like it wouldn't last very long. The double-hit key problem is the opposite of what I have now; it forces me to type slowly (40wpm) otherwise half the words are missing characters.

Good thing these keyboards come with return policy's so they can be tested for 3/4 of a month X)

 

Yah, if I knew how Perhaps i'll take his apart since it's an obviously dying breed, and see if I can find something like a gain. It's going in the garbage anyway. So it can't hurt. The mouse arrow acts erratic at times. No doubt it will consume a little more power. But that's what rechargeable batteries are for

 

Thing is, even with a clear keyboard signal, the RF Logitech mouse my friend had was an absolute pain on the carpet. Plug my wired Razer in, still perfect.... :S

 

id 3rd the saitek eclipse 2

 

To be honest, of all the gaming grade keyboards, the Eclipse 2 is probably one of the best. Granted, it won't last as long as an office keyboard, but no gaming keyboard will, that's not how they're designed. However you should get a couple of years out of an Eclipse 2 at least, well above the industry average for gaming keyboards.

 

Oman7,
You hit the nail right on the head! You can't increase the wattage of the signal, because it's not adjustable. You can increase the gain on the front end, much like a power mike does by increasing the Amplitude before it becomes the rf signal. It gives it a more solid "footprint", so to speak so the receiver can get more information and be less likely to drop out! It's not all about signal strength, per say. After all, you don't usually lose the signal at all, just parts of the content, because the signal is weak. Build up the front end, and you can increase your distance!

Russ

 

The Eclipse II sounds like best buy, except for the light bleeding through between keys. Does anyone know if that's part of the design, not normally a problem or if the lighting is turned down far enough not noticeable? I don't really want light coming from the keyboard, more of just enough illumination to locate lesser used keys in the dark.

 

It's standard for almost all backlit keyboards. very few keyboard will not leak any light externally to the keys. The only ones that will be guaranteed not to do it are individually-lit keyboards which are very expensive.

 

Well I did want to get the Optimus Maximus anyway ;P

In reality I'll probably just get the Eclipse II and turn the back light off if it bothers me.

Thanks for the input guy's.

 

Wow logged into MSN for the first time in a few months and I have loads of emails from people wondering where I am. Haha I didn't know that many people actually cared to talk to me XD

Anyhoo tongue kissed a girl last night and it was awesome

I'd definitely recommend the Eclipse II as well. I think you'll actually like the backlighting on that keyboard. Brightness adjustments as well if it ever gets irritating. Better quality than the Eclipse I as well.

Never used the Cyborg but I've heard horror stories. The eclipses seem fairly solid though.

Just got done playing with an Arctosa which is basically a Lycosa without the lighting and the quality is top notch. Glossy surface though which means it's a magnet to grime and fingerprints. After 10 minutes of use the one I had here was starting to look a bit grubby.

I'd still say the Eclipse II, good quality, great lighting, and a varied surface texture so it wont look dirty if you don't polish it XD

 

I'm about to slap this badboy in an Asus A7M266 board tomorrow. Along with another build Busy exciting day for me I've not seen a processor as old as this one. I'm used to the new design that is completely covered up. The glowing section is the ONLY section that i'm going to apply arctic silver 5 compound, correct? Don't worry, I'll update the bios FIRST if necessary I believe 1006 is minimum, though I should probably go with 1008...

Athlon Xp Mobile thoroughbred 1800

 

Thanks ddp. It's old to me though I've only ever bought cpu's in the last 4 yrs. None have looked like this one.