Showing posts with label software. Show all posts

Taking Windows 10 Technical Preview Out For a Spin


     The Windows 10 Technical Preview has been available to public for quite some time now. While I did try it out using VMs during the earlier builds, it wasn't until when Microsoft enabled Cortana in Build 9926 and announced the free upgrade to Windows 10 for both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users; that I installed it into a true partition. This post will be about my experience using the Technical Preview as well as some pointers for you all wanting to be prepared for the free upgrade.


     Before I get started, if you are interested in getting into the action yourself, installing the Technical Preview is easier than ever; just get the Windows 7 USB/DVD Tool (link) and the Technical Preview ISO (link). The procedure is pretty self explanatory and if you are still confused, I am afraid that you are not prepared (sick reference, bro). Also, this post is written in the perspective of someone who has switched to Windows 8 from the get-go and didn't find it as frustrating as the general consensus has it be.

     Installing the Technical Preview was as easy as any other OS installation and if I recall correctly, didn't take as long as my Windows 8.1 install, but not by much though. If you are coming from Windows 7 or any previous OSs, I recommend that you do not connect your PC to the internet to ensure that the initial setup process. For Windows 8.1 users, go ahead and sign in using your Microsoft account so that things like IE settings and wallpapers will get synced to your new Windows 10 ecosystem.



     From the get-go, the most noticeable difference one will see would be the addition of a search bar on the task bar. This search bar is what Cortana is. Users can either type their search queries in the search box or use voice activation. To be honest, it's faster and way more reliable to just open up the browser of your choice and type what you want to search for. As for searching on local disk, I didn't notice any significant differences in terms of speed. Talking of local searching, if you didn't like how local searching worked for Windows 8.1, don't hold your breath for Windows 10. Typing 'control' in the search bar, the first result instead of being the comprehensive 'Control Panel', the OS gives you the inconsistent 'PC Settings' instead. While I am used to this (yup, Win8 behaves the same way), I still find it a mild annoyance especially for new users coming from Win7.


     Speaking of the 'PC Settings' interface, the inconsistencies doesn't stop at just being confused as a control panel, in fact, it is just plain dumb. One would assume that clicking into the 'Personalisation' sub-section would give users access to all customisation options including things like changing wallpapers, colour schemes, and all the other doo-dad; but nope, we have that option in another menu instead. Maybe if they just changed the tool-tip according to what the menu actually does. It wouldn't create these issues. Of course, that is not the only example of redundant menus, I could go on all day long about the 'PC settings' menu, but the post has to go on.

     Oh, and if you didn't notice already, the start menu is back! Now with Metro a.k.a the Start Screen integrated into it. If you are one of those rare few that like the Start Screen, you can still click the full screen button found on the right top corner to bring back the Start Screen. Apparently, I read that one could re-size the start menu to be taller, but I can't for the life of me re-size it. No matter, the quirks of being a Technical Preview I guess.

     From the screenshot above, you can also see that Microsoft went ahead and changed how the taskbar behaves in relation to active and inactive windows. Have a better look at it here.


     On the left, you will see that the file explorer icon on the taskbar only has a little grey-ish line due to it being inactive and the 'PC Settings' icon being grey-filled due to it being the currently active window. I'm not too keen about this change but perhaps people would like the minimalistic (?) approach.


     On topic of active and inactive windows, Microsoft has also brought a very nice feature from OSX into Windows 10: the workspace/task manager/whatever it's called. Now, you can have multiple workspaces and switch between them seamlessly using the task manager button beside the search bar or using the "Windows Key + Tab" shortcut key. This is great news for people like me who tend to have too many windows open while multi-tasking, now I can properly manage work from pleasure! (curse you Steam and Reddit). This is pretty much my favourite feature to come out of this Technical Preview.


     Onto the system apps, Microsoft has pretty much changed how 'Modern' apps behave. Now, users can use modern apps like any other desktop app, with the ability to run it in a window, or fullscreen. I think this is one of the most requested feature from users of Windows 8/8.1. However, for whatever reason, the OS still defaults to the redundant file openers like Photos, Videos and Music (apps designed by Microsoft with modern-esque accents). While it only takes one click to change it back to our trusty old Windows Photo Viewer, it still presents itself as a mild annoyance.


     On the other hand, Windows 10 also comes packaged with a technical preview for Internet Explorer. I don't have much to report about that. I think it's just a way for web developers to determine their websites are displaying correctly in IE. There's even a button for users to report to the IE team if they see a website not being properly displayed in IE.

     There are a ton of minor adjustments made to Windows 10 compared to Windows 8. I could probably go on and on if I had to describe everything in this post, but nobody is going to read that. So as a closing note, is Windows 10 usable? Pretty much yes. For those who are on the bandwagon that Windows 8 is the worst thing to ever happen to Windows after Vista, perhaps it is not for you because I find Windows 10 a slightly modified version of Windows 8, instead of an improved version of Windows 7. If you have any other questions about Windows 10 before making the jump, feel free to leave them in the comments down below. Until then, see you in the next post (if I can figure out what to write).
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ROCCAT Kone Pure Optical Software Overview


     As I have said time and time again, one of the most important part that makes a gaming peripheral actually worthy of the 'gaming' tag is the software features said peripheral is able to provide. ROCCAT, as an experienced peripheral manufacturer, has also prepared custom software for their product line for users to customize peripheral settings to their own desire. Let's see what ROCCAT has done with their software dubbed "Talk" or "TalkFX".

     Before I start with the overview, a little note to those who might stumble upon this post because they were scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make ROCCAT's drivers work properly: You need to go to the product page, download the specific product's drivers and then only proceed to install ROCCAT Talk. For an example, if I have the Kone Pure Optical, I would first have to head over to ROCCAT's website, click on 'Support' then select the Kone Pure Optical from the products listing in order to download the driver for it. Only after that, would users be able to utilize the ROCCAT Talk software; which brings us to seemingly the first flaw of ROCCAT's software compared to other vendors: the lack of a centralized hub for driver downloading.


     Anyhow, ROCCAT makes up for their lack of centralized driver installation with what I dare say, one of the most full featured software I have seen to date. Upon firing up the application itself, you are greeted with the main control page which allows you to adjust everything that has to do with mouse movement like sensitivity and DPI settings. While that are the settings you would normally come across any sort of gaming mice that has software support, I find three very intriguing settings in this menu: the vertical scroll speed, the horizontal tilt speed and the double click speed. You can adjust both the vertical scroll speed and horizontal tilt speed (the horizontal tilt function needs to be mapped onto a mouse button first), making even normal web browsing a better experience.


     Moving on to the next tab, users are able to determine their own button configurations on the mouse. As you can see, with EasyShift [+], one can technically have 2 different commands for each button (except for the EasyShift[+] button itself), which sums up to a whopping 17 different function on a single mouse. To me, EasyShift[+] would easily be one of the reasons I would purchase a ROCCAT peripheral, it offers tons of functionality without giving too much physical buttons that may confuse users.

     Users can also map macros (multiple keystrokes) onto the mouse buttons. ROCCAT provides us with a bunch of preset macros for a plethora of popular games. Of course, users could also opt to record their own set of macros to their desire. Switching to the advanced macro editor also allows users to edit the delay between each different keystroke.


     Oh and before I forget, the Kone Pure Optical is able to save up to 5 profiles onto its on-board memory along with all the macros that users have configured beforehand in the software itself. This proves to be a very handy feature for gamers who frequent LAN cafes but prefer to use their own gear as there is no need to install additional software on another PC to utilize the profiles saved on-board.

     Moving along to the next tab, users get to customize even more things. Users can choose what colour they prefer the lighting of the logo to be and between the three lighting modes: fully lighted, breathing or lighting off. The colour picker also supports RGB codes so users can pinpoint their favourite colour. One thing that I would like ROCCAT to expand on would be to include a lighting mode that will switch between several colours after every breath, something like the ColourShift featured on the SteelSeries Siberia Elite.

     Users can also change the polling rate of the mouse to get a greater variation of mouse sensitivities. Other than that, users also gain access to Windows Pointer Speed configurations without actually needing to navigate to the configuration utility that is located in the Control Panel. Sound feedback on the other hand, is a very cool feature ROCCAT added to notify users what settings they are actually changing on-the-fly. Every time you change one of the relevant settings, an announcer would announce what settings you had changed; for an example, when users switch to 1200 DPI, the announcer would announce that users are at 1200 DPI, pretty nifty if you ask me.

     The next tab is called the ROCCAT R.A.D. R.A.D stands for "ROCCAT Achievement Display" which makes the entire tab name sound redundant as the full name would be "ROCCAT ROCCAT Achievement Display". Anyhow, like what the name implies, here you can check out all the achievements you've earned from using the mouse. I find the R.A.D a bit pointless, but some might say that sharing trophies is fun and all; unfortunately, the share function is mostly broken for whatever reason. You can refer to the screenshot below.

the broken share function.
      Nevertheless, the R.A.D still has a bit of usage in that it is able to show users the usage statistics of their peripherals, but other than that, the trophies are still a bit gimmicky to appraise ROCCAT for it.

     The last screen is pretty self-explanatory. Pressing the driver download button will lead users to the driver download page where users can install newer versions of the driver. I suggest that ROCCAT also display what's the latest version of the driver alongside the installed version of the driver so that users can know if their drivers are up to date in just a glance.

     That pretty much sums up ROCCAT's software implementation. ROCCAT's software is no doubt one of the most full-featured software out in the market. However, my biggest gripe with it would be the lack of centralization like other manufacturers. The need to download separate drivers for separate peripherals is really a hassle because some users might not be able to pinpoint what drivers they are supposed to install or assume that just by installing Talk FX by itself would be enough. Nevertheless, kudos to ROCCAT for the software implementation and hopefully they would continue to improve on their top notch work.
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SteelSeries Engine 3 Overview


Upon successful installation of the SteelSeries Engine 3, users will be greeted with this screen if the Siberia Elite is plugged in via USB.


From this screen, users can change the profile of your Siberia Elite with their self-edited configurations. More of that in the next screenshot.


Users can set up new configurations inside the SteelSeries Engine. Users are also able to take advantage of the auto-launch with program feature here.    


The entire overview of the SteelSeries Engine 3. Users can configure Dolby surround options, noise cancelling and compression of the microphone and as well as configure their equalizer settings using pre-defined profiles or self-tune to their pleasure.


A plethora of different equalizer settings to suit every event.


Users can also configure the illumination settings of their headset here. There are 4 different settings to choose from. Personally I like using the audio volume trigger with my favourite cyan blue colour, or the color shift settings between a few different colours.


That pretty much sums up what the SteelSeries Engine 3 is about for the Siberia Elite. Personally some improvements I would like to see from SteelSeries is a shortcut key to enable profile shifting instead of the auto-launch. Another improvement they could make would be the stopping the welcome screen from constantly refreshing my device list even though I have not unplugged anything. Other than that, I would like to see a lot more color shift selections in the future, because that thing is freaking cool, just the lack of options is a big turn off.
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Razer Synapse 2.0 Overview


If you didn't know already, Razer requires you to run their software dubbed "Synapse 2.0" if you desire to fully utilize the fact that you bought one of their premium-ly priced products. Today I will do a brief (or maybe long) overview of what Synapse 2.0 truly adds to the product you just purchased.

the login prompt you get after starting the software.
  As you can see above, you get a login prompt as you start the software for the first time. No fright, its only a one time procedure as you can stay logged in afterwards. This part of the software is where it got a lot of flak for because of it's "always online" behaviour. In the past you could not reprogram your macros or change whatever else if  you were not connected to the internet. That is nothing to be worry about now because the software now also works without an internet connection provided you were logged in the last time you were connected to the internet.

main interface
  After logging in, you will be prompted with the main interface. Depending on what devices you have connected to your computer, the main interface will show the devices on the bottom left. In my case I have my Razer Deathstalker and Deathadder connected to my laptop.

  Once you are in the Synapse interface, there is a ton of stuff to figgle around in here. For instance, you could rebind literally every key on your Razer keyboard! Beat that!

wait for it......
the default key
the abundance of options you could choose from

  And of course with gaming grade peripherals, of course you get the option to record macros. If you have no idea what recording a macro is, it is essentially recording a sequence of keys you press to enable quick access while you are gaming. For an example, I recorded how I usually fetch items from my stash to courier in Dota 2, and binded it into one of my sidekey of my mouse, so instead of pressing the sequence, I have access to my items in one click.

the macro recording screen

I don't think there is anything more to add at this point, but if you have any opinions, feel free to drop me an email or comment below.
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