G13 + G35

[Slamz]

G13



I didn't really like this thing when I first got it, but it's been growing on me. It's not as easy to use as the Nostromo, I'm not overly enthused with the analog joystick (versus the Nostromo's 4-key thumbpad) and I had a harder time getting a feel for where my fingers are (I'm still considering supergluing some 'dots' to the keypads so I can tell by feel which key is which) but it has some nice features.

1) You can remap keys easily without switching out of the application.

With the Nostromo, mapping keys involved hitting alt-tab and opening the editor. With the G13 there's a "record" button on the device, so you hit "record", the key you want to map, the keyboard combo you want to map to it and then hit "record" again.

2) The LCD is kinda cool.

There's decent application support for the LCD screen. There's FRAPS support that shows you FPS and whether or not you're recording. STO itself has support that shows you health (which is useless, since that's visible on screen, but I like the idea). Supposedly there's a Ventrilo plugin that'll show you who's talking. Or there's a clock. Or a media player gizmo that shows you what song is playing. Or a stopwatch/timer. Or a CPU/memory monitor.

3) Any thumb control is better than WASD.

Apparently it can actually operate as an analog joystick in games that support joysticks but for WASD games you just map it to buttons. I find it a little awkward to use an analog input for digital movement but you get used to it. The Nostromo got me hooked on thumb control and I can't go back to WASD.

4) More keys than the Nostromo.

That's the whole reason I bought it. I do miss my Nostromo wheel, though, which was technically 3 extra buttons.


It was a hassle getting it to work with STO though, because apparently the G13 is too fast and was making STO recognize "CTRL+3" as both "CTRL+3" and "3". There's a workaround that's not too tough so let me know if anyone needs help with that. I can save you some frustration.



G13 vs Nostromo....close call. I'd say G13 though just because it has more buttons. I was forever running out of buttons on the Nostromo.


G35



I'm enjoying these. Very comfortable. The mic has a little red LED on it that turns on when you have it on mute so no more "sorry, forgot I was muted". It also mutes automatically if you tilt it vertically.

The headphones have 3 extra buttons on the side that you can map to various things. I have it mapped to Media Player pause/play, next track and previous track. Combined with the LCD display on the G13 this lets me play games and do some simple media player management.

The "7.1" is probably a bit of an overkill but they are good surround sound earphones with great bass.

The volume control is a roller on the earpiece, and the mute button is on there as well. I think that'll make them more durable than the "in-line controls" of other PC headphones, which is exactly where my last pair broke.

These are USB headphones. No problems so far. For some reason my Adobe movie making software insists on using my speakers (probably a setting somewhere for that) but every other app automatically switched output to the headphones (though you'll need to restart the app after plugging in the earphones, e.g., Vent).

[Snowreap]

I'm using the G13 with Warhammer Online. normally, the device only responds to physical events -- e.g. pushing or releasing a button. but there's a nifty hack that lets the G13 feed itself a stream of 'fake' events, which means you can have long-running scripts that can act even if you don't push any buttons at all. so, for example, I have an anti-idle script that will hit the spacebar every 5 minutes (but only if, in the last 5 minutes, no buttons were pressed). it runs all the time; I don't have to worry about remembering to turn it on if I go afk or am otherwise distracted.

it's also very flexible about what you can make the buttons do (as long as you're willing to write a bit of Lua script to handle it). I have my G22 button set up as a Ctrl key, so that I can use it as a modifier with other buttons. but if I double-press-and-hold, I can have it do something different (like hold Alt instead, or in my case temporarily switch to the M2 page for as long as G22 is double-held) (background: the G13 has 3 'pages', M1, M2 and M3 that you can assign different bindings to, and there are 3 M buttons that you can use to switch pages. but the M buttons aren't within easy reach, and they're not that convenient to use if you want to switch to another page for only 1 or 2 button presses, then switch back. so I have G22 set up as an "M2-shift" key that puts the keypad into M2 mode until I release G22).

-ken

[Hoofhurr]

I've heard that it is that flexible. Very cool.

[Slamz]

Ugh. Logitech has stopped making the G13.

Anyone use the Razr Orbweaver? I think that's the current iteration of the old Nostromo. I switched to the G13 mainly because it had more buttons but I did like the old Nostromo. I see the form factor has changed a little though.