Sorry to call this out, lol. Those headsets have really shitty bass. They're made to emphasize particular sounds in counter strike.(i.e. footsteps) I don't recommend buying a pair. If you're playing WoW or listening to music you'll appreciate the SteelSeries Siberia a lot better. You probably won't find 5H for $30 unless you get the non v2's, which have been recalled by Steel.

Yes, the steelseires siberia (I use them) are excellent headphones. The open-air design also helps avoid ear-fatigue.

HOWEVER: The Etymotic Research, Inc. - High-fidelity Earphones and Hearing Instrumentation ER-4S are going to give you the BEST sound quality and isolation of any headphones currently made. If you like great sound, get a pair. The only disadvantage of course is the $300 price tag. I'd avoid the ER-4P because of the enhanced bass response, it's a bit too much. Also, be very, very careful. They can output 122db directly into your ear at full power. This WILL cause deafness. They are not toy earbuds like what you get with an iPod, they are professional headphones.
The next down would probably be the grado SR-325i.

As a note, of the grado labs headphones, The Steelseries siberia comes out between the SR-125 and the SR-225.
Grado - HeadRoom - Right Between Your Ears
And see the prices? Steelseries are a LOT cheaper. They're a great buy.

I just bought the Steelseries Steelsound 5H v2 headset to replace a set of Siberias (branded by Icemat, but same design as the Steelseries ones linked above) that just broke on me and I have to agree that the Steelsound 5H v2 have pretty poor bass for music. They are fine for gaming though, and I love the mic design on them so I'll keep them, but for the price paid, I do wish they were a bit more multifunctional.

As a side note about Siberias headsets, the open design is indeed very nice for sound, much better than the Steelsound 5H v2 set I just bought, but the connection point for the cans are very fragile. Two very small and short screws attach the cans to the headband, and they weaken very easily over time as you twist the headset when putting them on or pulling them off.

Sound quality is a matter of personal opinion, but a lot of people will disagree with you on the ER-4S being the best there is. Even among non-custom-molded IEMs (which are in another league when it comes to cost and, by most indications, sound quality), there are plenty of other choices from Shure, Ultimate Ears, Westone, etc. Personally, I prefer the Shures when it comes to canal phones, and have a pair of Sennheiser HD600s for home use.

True, true, it's very much personal perception. Beyond a certain point your sound card has more effect than your headphones anyway, so it is always best to test what you can. It also depends on what you want to listen to. Listening to music I'd prefer to use actual speakers, games and such I generally prefer headphones.

Sadly, I missed the window on this mouse. It makes me very frustrated since I appear to be one of the 1 in a million gamers who use trackballs and what my Logitech really lacks is additional buttons. I've spent a year or so now searching off an on for a replacement trackball and, unless you're willing to mod the hardware or convert a trackball from commercial use, you're probably stuck trying to make yours last until the end of time. I don't want to convert to a mouse that's no longer being made though- so I'm sticking with my ancient (but still sturdy):
I've had this one for at least 3 years. Which I suppose it nice.... I want more buttons though >.<

My layout is pretty straightforward, but I'd like some input as well, because I find that I'd like to hotkey more things, and thirty-three individual combinations don't seem to be cutting it. The three leftmost buttons from top to bottom are tab, control, and shift. The other eleven regular buttons are just generic hotkeys, keyed as 0-9 for simplicity, for which I use buttons without modifiers, with shift, and with control. I use the d-pad for movement (forward, back, and strafes), the little red button for mounts, and the thumb button for push-to-talk. I really like the d-pad for movement and the PTT key, but I'm wondering if I should fundamentally rethink how I use the fourteen main buttons and the red button.

How is the Dpad for movement?

I'm using classic WSAD like you would on a normal keyboard, and Dpad for some other actions, I've been thinking about using Dpad for movement instead but I wanted some input from people who used it like that before I did.

I much prefer the d-pad for movement. It took me a few days to get used to it, but with holiday schedules coming up, a lot of people tone down raiding schedules, allowing you to play around with it on your own time. I actually received mine as a gift at christmas last year, so I did this as well. I've assigned it so that forward is at the top of my thumb. The added bonus with the PTT key being below the d-pad is that I can hit it with my knuckle, allowing me to simultaneously move, speak, and perform other actions. I'm still interested in other configurations, however.

Yes i tried those earphones back in the day. Very very good sound, they were perfect for gaming, aswell as you said, it warms your ears!
Tho the weight on the ears made me change, now ive got a koss UR-20 (huge pads, super sound!).

And to comment for those who has been looking on those new, slim mac keyboards for gaming: its hot!
They are really a dream to use, they are leightweight, very small and compact but the buttons is still at a good size

You need some programs to remap the keys (windows key, altGr key etc) but rest is fine.
I also made the f16-f19 keys to media keys (swap songs etc with Foobar (< lovely music program btw))

Ah, so you can remap the keys? I stopped using my mac keyboard when the num pad wasn't actually a num pad, which made continuing to use it difficult as I do a bit of data entry when I work from home on reports. I'll try one of those programs for remapping keys.

I believe that it was released in late November. Newegg lists it as being out of stock.

Short answer: You have interference, caused by horrible shielding on either your speaker cables or the speakers themselves. Wireless devices radiate EM, your speakers should be shielded so they don't pick it up but most "pc" audio devices tend to skimp on decent wires.

Long answer: You can purchase shielded cabling and speakers, but they won't be cheap. You should first check to make sure you're running straight cables, and not reinforcing any existing interference patterns by building makeshift antennae, and are not putting your EM radiator directly on top of he speakers/cabling. You might be able to use some of the existing elements of your GF's computer enviroment to ghetto-shield the cables, and if you have a fair bit of random metal around the area you might make some astonishing gains simply by grounding it. Without looking at the area in question I can't make more specific recomendations.

Yeah, thats the steelseries 5H headset that I was so critical about. But I did play counter strike professionally prior to me getting hooked on world of warcraft.

MX510, using the keyboard that came with my computer.

I have to agree completely -- even after trying the newer MX518 and G7 mice, I still didn't find them as comfortable-in-the-hand to use as the MX1000 - I really think it's the best mouse I've owned thus far.

I have to recommend that everyone using the n52 (or n52te) at least try the d-pad for this. Just do it and go to some level 10 murloc town while you test it. There are many benefits which I'll try to list intelligently:

1. It frees up the other fingers of your left hand. The n52 handles signals from as many of its keys as you'd like to press at the same time.

2. It frees up the other keys allowing for (at least) a huge block of 12 buttons that can be state-shifted to more action buttons. I don't even recommend using the n52 software for state shifting. Use bongos or bartender3 to achieve 36 (ore more) action buttons under the four fingers of your left hand. That still leaves the thumb free to move and seven spare buttons that do not need or even want to be shifted.

3. It frees up your right hand for modifiers. I've bound shift & ctrl to my mx1000's "wheel tilt" left & right. This separates the paging action from the key press which is going to be faster than doing both shifting and keying with the same hand. This also snaps back to default state when the wheel's tilt is released, so that the action bar page isn't accidentally left in a shifted state.

4. This is somewhat a call-back to #2, but you can visually layout the "block of buttons" more easily, with your preferred addon, rather than mindlessly slapping WASD or ESDF into the middle of the n52's keyboard and having it not match up on screen. I have my action bars setup much like the numeric 10-key pad on a keyboard, and the n52's layout is identical.

Perhaps I fail at intelligent list-making. I believe the largest benefit is consolidating all the movement (strafes & jump) to the familiar "nintendo-style" rocker switch under a familiar finger: the thumb.

I bound mine that way around spring 2005 and I can't think of any reason to lose the thumb functionality.

It was ANNOUNCED for mid-november. Haven't seen any in germany yet beside the announcement on the belkin.co.uk page.

One of the press releases on the Belkin site was updated to change the release date from November '07 to January '08 so I don't think anyone has it yet.

Press Release.

Do any of the MX1000 users recognize the problem with Setpoint where (when using it) the mouse occassionally refuses to move over the X-axis? This lasts only like half a second or so, after which the mouse continues to funtion properly.

I first encountered this issue with Setpoint 4.0 under Windows XP. I just switched back to 3 where everything worked flawlessly. Now I'm using Vista 64 and it doesn't accept Setpoint 3 and the new version gives me the same issue using Vista 64.

Using the MS drivers the mouse gives no issues, but the tilt function of the mousewheel can't be bound to anything.

Thanks for the feed back

I have mine setup for WSAD movement since I kind of strolled into WoW from the Counter Strike/Unreal Tournament direction, so I was used to WSAD (and the fingers on my left hand seem to automatically snap into the WSAD position, even when I'm typing.)

Definatly intrested in trying it out now, especially since I can see some sense in freeing up the keys for ingame actions (I use some D-Pad directions for in-game actions, and sometimes you accidently tilt it the wrong way and it doesn't do what you want and it's not exactly easy to spam that tilt either :P).

I run setpoint 4.0 under WinXP with my nearly 4 year old MX1000 and have never experienced any issues moving in the x-axis.

There's very likely a hair in the aperture of your mouse. Here are the steps to solve that:

1. Flip the mouse on its back
2. Do not look into the laser with your remaining good eye
3. Turn the mouse off
4. Remove the hair (perhaps some compressed air is safest?)

So far everyone that's voiced trouble (within earshot of me) over their laser or optical mouse has had a pet hair stuck in the aperture for the laser/camera/whatever.