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Steelseries 7G Keyboard

Will Smith — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

The SteelSeries 7G looks like a normal, run-of-the-mill keyboard.
But beneath its plain Jane exterior lies a keyboard that we couldn’t lock up.
(click picture for full shot)

A few minor flaws aside, the SteelSeries 7G is a truly spectacular piece of hardware.

Almost completely devoid of amenities, this keyboard was designed from the ground up to prevent keyboard lockup—the effect that suspends all input if you inadvertently press too many buttons at once. Lockup is essentially a death sentence for competitive gamers.

To curtail lockups, SteelSeries designed its key mapping so that the board’s most frequently used keys are all on separate circuits -- genius! The 7G also uses the PS/2 interface and a proprietary keypress buffer to ensure lockup is all but impossible. While we’ve tested other keyboards that didn’t lock up during gameplay, we’ve never tested one that we couldn’t get to lock by mashing two hands worth of keys at once. Well, the SteelSeries didn’t lockup, even when we mashed 20 keys in unison.

Aside from that, the 7G is a pretty straightforward keyboard. The fairly standard layout has but a single deviation: It sports a SteelSeries key, which can be used along with the function keys to control volume and media playback. The SteelSeries key replaces the normal Windows key on the left side of the keyboard. We understand why SteelSeries would ditch the Windows key on a gaming keyboard, but we’d much prefer a physical switch that lets us turn the annoying Windows key on and off rather than an outright removal.

We don’t understand why SteelSeries would bother adding USB 1.1 ports to a modern keyboard, but that’s what you’ll find on the back of the 7G. While USB 1.1 would be suitable for use with a mouse, we wouldn’t use these ports for anything else. But we do love the integrated headphone/microphone ports on the plank, although we wish there was an easier way to integrate this feature with our speakers.

We should also mention that this is one of the loudest keyboards we’ve tested in recent memory. Although SteelSeries describes the 7G’s keys as no-click, they’re certainly not quiet. The other thing we need to touch on is the 7G’s price -- this is an incredibly bare-bones keyboard for an MSRP of $150. So, if you’ve never managed to lock up your keyboard in the course of normal game playing, you probably don’t need to shell out the big bucks for this one.

The Dream Machine Revealed--Part One of Three!

David Murphy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:36:25 -0500

Are you ready? Every year, Maximum PC builds the de-facto, pants-shattering, best-system-ever. We crown this stunning achievement of manufacturing gusto the Dream Machine. This is its eleventh incarnation, and perhaps its most controversial: the equipment, the enclosure, the build--not a single part of this year's rig was without debate.

In this epic three-part series, we're going to give you a first-look at exactly what's going in this holiest of rigs. And we're also going to walk you through its actual construction--coolant leaks and all--in one of the most demanding chassis we've ever slapped a machine into. Let's begin.

The Keyboard

Microsoft's Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 is our typing instrument of choice for the many games we'll be playing on said awesome Dream Machine 2008. It feels as great as it looks, the ergonomic split of the keys soothing our fingertips for hours upon hours' worth of crazy Team Fortress 2 action. But don't take our word for it--take our official word for it by checking out the March 2006 review of this little beast.

The Mouse

Logitech's G5 Revision 2 mouse is as good-looking as it is good-using. Good to use. Whatever. This mouse rocks. It's supreme comfort is matched by its slick gliding action, which you're free to set to your leisure. You can customize the on-screen translation of the mouse's speedy movements by using the two sensitivity buttons below the scroll wheel. These, along with two back/forward thumb-toggle buttons, are as helpful for fragging your friends as they are useful for advanced application work, like Photoshop painting. And if that wasn't enough, you can even stick weights into the G5's guts to better match your real-world movement sensitivities to your on-screen performance. Now move your mouse over to our full review of this awesome accessory.

The Display

If you've been following Maximum PC for any length of time, this should be a no-brainer. We have yet to review a monitor as delightful as Gateway's 30-inch XHD3000. It's picture is clear, vivid, and glitch-free: the trifecta of achievements that separates lesser monitors from the upper-echelon Dream Machine contenders. The display has enough connection options to fit right in your living room, although we'd think that you would want this touch-button display smack-dab in the middle of your desk. If you have room, that is. Multitask by reading our full review of the display while you shuffle your papers and trinkets around.

The Hard Drive(s)

For the speediest, largest-capacity performance you can get your hands on, look no further than Samsung's HD103UJ terabyte hard drive. This is the fastest terabyte drive we've reviewed, so it only makes perfect sense to lock three of them in a RAID 5 array for a maximum combination of redundancy, speed, and storage. We were tempted to go for the gusto with RAID 0, but given the sheer amount of data we'll be slapping on these three beauties, the last thing we want to happen is for one drive oopsie to nuke the array. We'll trade away one terabyte of storage for two protected terabytes any day of the week.

As for the HD103UJ's little friend. Well. How to put this delicately. The other drives we're using in the Dream Machine are so new, so fresh, so undisclosed... that we can't talk about them yet. Nope. It took many vows of silence, the sacrifice of one intern, and limitless amounts of begging for us to be able to get our hands on these models. Check back with us mid-July for a full review of this big secret, but feel free to speculate what we're up to until then: solid-state storage? An enterprise-class drive? A tiberium-powered disk?

Check back next Monday for the second part of our Dream Machine reveal. Until then, post your thoughts and predictions in the comments section below!

Microsoft Entertainment Desktop 7000

Will Smith — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:38:58 -0500

The problem with having a PC in your living room is simple. It’s the mouse. Mousing on the couch is a royal pain in the ass.

Resting your mouse hand on your leg, on a couch arm, or on one of your couch buddies just doesn’t work. That’s why we were excited to see that Microsoft’s new living-room keyboards ship with an integrated mousing surface. We just didn’t understand why the company also included a wireless mouse.

The answer became clear after a few moments with this keyboard. The mousing area just doesn’t work particularly well. Set it at a slow enough speed to be accurate and reliable, and it takes forever to navigate the screen. Set it fast enough to zip from side to side, and it’s very twitchy. We couldn’t find a happy medium.

The pad does include a few nifty tricks, though. Flip a switch above it, and it changes to D-pad mode, which is good (although slightly twitchy) for navigating through the Media Center interface. We also really dig the fact that in mouse mode the mouse buttons are located on the far side of the keyboard, so you move the cursor with one thumb but click with the other. Were the mouse surface slightly better tuned, it would have been a perfect design.

The keyboard’s layout is a little goofy; the home keys are off center, and the entire keyboard is slightly warped. It’s not a major problem, since we figure you’ll use this keyboard more for typing URLs and instant messages than for banging out your first novel.

The placement of the media keys is excellent, and eminently useful, whether you’re using Media Center or just iTunes, and we especially like the inclusion of dedicated buttons that open Media Center and the Windows menu. We’re still annoyed by the presence of proprietary keys—like the Windows Messenger Live call button on this board—but they’re easily reprogrammed to serve other functions. The mouse is a decent rechargeable.

If Microsoft improves the performance of the mouse surface and ditches the then-unnecessary mouse, this could be a killer living-room keyboard.