I've been using a Boomslang 2000 mouse now for some time (since August of 2001), and though it hasn't been without problems (more on that in a moment), it's otherwise been a wonderful input device since day one. Either I must be rather hard on mice, however, or I was "lucky" enough to get a unit with questionable switches. For some months now, the right mouse button has been a bit "bouncy"; i.e., it would sometimes register two clicks for a single click. This hasn't been an insurmountable problem, and I've been able to change my usage style to avoid it most of the time.
Earlier this week, however, the left mouse button seemingly lost the ability to maintain a down state. Unless I really pressed down hard when clicking, I could not drag objects around. I would click and hold down the button, but the mouse was apparently sending the mouse-button-up message prematurely. This was intolerable. I couldn't select text. I couldn't work with image-editing software (just you try selecting areas by dragging when you can't drag!) and it was driving me nuts in a big hurry. Since I was growing tired of the right-button issue as well, I decided it was high time to look into another mouse. It had been a while since I surveyed the field of competitors, so I did a little research before making any purchases. What I discovered surprised me more than a little, as you'll see if you read onward.
I'm a pretty hard-core computer user and gamer. As such, I desire good precision and performance from a mouse in both settings, work and play. I would love to be able to use an optical mouse simply because they do not require cleaning. In fact, I used one of the original optical mice from Microsoft for quite some time, but I gave it up when I found the Boomslang 2000. Why, you ask? Simple. The Boomslang 2000 has far greater precision and more powerful features. It's been a few years since the Boomslang 2000 was introduced, however, and I had hope that the competition had caught up with it in the meantime.
The key to precision in a mouse is counts-per-inch (CPI). For surviving DOS-programmers this will no doubt take you back (as it did me) to the days of Mickeys-per-inch and other such amusing units when fussing with mouse drivers. Suffice it to say that the better the CPI rating for a mouse, the better its ability to report small movements. This translates into greater precision when moving the mouse about the screen, or when trying to bring one's crosshairs to bear on a target while playing various video games. For a nice overview of the current state of the art, I suggest reading one of the many helpful articles on the Tom's Hardware site, or this more recent piece, though I think their conclusions are wrong as I'll soon explain.
At any rate, I decided to try the best of the breed from the two major competitors, Microsoft and Logitech. None of the optical mice made by Microsoft exceed 400 CPI, and the best the Logitech line can do is 800 CPI. For sake of reference, the Boomslang 2000 has (not surprisingly) a rating of 2000 CPI. I figured initially that Microsoft would probably come up short, but that Logitech would likely be good enough for my purposes. After all, the Boomslang 2000 might be 2.5 times as precise on paper, but I've got to believe that once you get past a certain point increased resolution cannot be discerned, right?
Maybe, but that point is beyond 800 CPI. I used the Microsoft Intellimouse Optical alongside the Logitech MX500 Optical Mouse for several days, and neither of them came even close to filling the Boomslang 2000's shoes. Both served somewhat adequately for day-to-day chores (the lack of any on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment was felt keenly), but neither was desirable for gaming. I tried those mice with Unreal Tournament (UT), Battlefield 1942 (BF1942), Warcraft III, and a number of other games, but the verdict was always the same: the lack of precision stuck out like a sore thumb.
In UT or BF1942, for example, if I zoomed in closely with a sniper rifle, then the slightest mouse movements translated into quite clearly quantized changes in the position of the crosshairs. In effect, precise aiming at distance was impossible. I tweaked the mouse sensitivity settings in the operating system, I toggled the settings provided by the drivers for extra precision, I tried adjusting the sensitivity and smoothing parameters within the games, etc. Nothing I did made a substantive difference. The latest and greatest from neither Microsoft nor Logitech held a candle to my poor, wounded Boomslang 2000.
So what's a user to do? The parent company of the Boomslang 2000, Kärna, has been fighting to recover from bankruptcy for some time. In fact, they never managed to release Windows XP drivers for the Boomslang 2000—possibly because the Windows 2000 drivers work, more or less—though semi-hopeful news still persists at the Razerzone web page. When I originally bought my Boomslang 2000, I had to make a lot of calls simply to find one on store shelves. I eventually located one at a store near me, and I snatched it up for a fraction of what they were selling for on EBay (up to $150 at the time). I've since found other Boomslang mice for sale on that auction site, but I haven't previously purchased another because the future of the technology is so uncertain.
Since none of the alternatives seemed very promising, I decided I would see if maybe I could fix my old mouse before going any further. Fortunately, I found the Razer Blueprints web site, which gives step-by-step instructions for disassembling the mouse. After I got mine apart, I tested the actual switches depressed by the mouse buttons. Sadly, the right switch itself was a bit flaky in exactly the way I had come to expect. The left switch, however, was in perfect working order! My latest and intolerable troubles must have been the result of the button, not the switch. Sure enough, after fussing with the left mouse button for a while, I was able to get it to work properly. I cleaned the mouse very thoroughly from the inside, and I reassembled it for further testing.
The result was glorious. Not only had I fixed my left-mouse-button problem completely, I seemed to have mitigated the "bouncy" troubles with the right button as well. Better still, because I had been able to clean the internal positioning assembly from the inside, I had restored an unbelievable amount of lost sensitivity in the process. I didn't realize it prior to opening the mouse up, but the rollers had become fouled somewhat by grime and dog hair—dog hair gets into everything, no matter how hard you try to keep it out—in places that cannot be cleaned with the mouse in one piece. Though the Boomslang 2000's precision easily bested the offerings from Microsoft and Logitech prior to the "operation", it positively blew them out of the water afterward.
Seriously, the first time I fired up UT, it was like something out of dim memory from my first days with the Boomslang 2000. Though I had returned the mouse driver and in-game sensitivity settings to the values they had retained for over a year prior to my testing, the game was simply unplayable. I had to turn down the sensitivity by a factor of roughly 50% to get it back to where I could move my wrist without the view whirling around dizzily. Best of all, and regardless of the settings, I can zoom in all the way with the sniper rifle in UT or BF1942 and still get what seems like sub-pixel accuracy. The view pans around with perfect, butter-smooth precision, no matter what settings or zoom are in effect.
As you can guess, I've gone back to using my Boomslang 2000. The mice from Microsoft and Logitech will be headed back to Best Buy this weekend without a doubt. I don't like the fact that I'm using a mouse whose buttons seem to be living on borrowed time, but the precision and additional features are simply too precious to lose. For those who haven't tried a Boomslang, let me say a couple of things. First, the Windows 2000 drivers (build 2012) work well enough under Windows XP. I often have to reset my sensitivity settings at startup, and I sometimes have to reconfigure the buttons as well. I've found an alleged fix on a web-based forum, but it doesn't seem to be completely reliable (or maybe I'm not doing something right).
When you buy the Boomslang 2000, you get a lot for your money. For starters, you get the most amazingly precise mouse ever built. Its precision utterly blows away the competition, even today, as was obvious within mere minutes of testing. What's more, the Boomslang 2000 is a very comfortable, ergonomically-designed mouse as well, fitting my hand much better than the too-small Microsoft unit or the oddly-shaped Logitech unit. "Lefties" need not worry either; the Boomslang 2000 is perfectly symmetrical, so that it may be used with either hand. Despite the driver issues I've mentioned, the Windows 2000 drivers still give you more functionality than any other mouse available in my experience. You can program the buttons of the Boomslang 2000 in a variety of ways. In my case, I've got the on-the-fly sensitivity enabled while still being able to use the fourth and fifth buttons in applications and games.
The bottom line is pretty simple, I think. Despite its defects, the Boomslang 2000 is still the unsurpassed king of mouse hill. I hope that the parent company can get back on its feet. I would hate to think that they won't be around to develop drivers for Windows XP or take their technology further. But whether they do or not, I know one thing for certain: you can have my Boomslang 2000 when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. I think I'll be trotting off to EBay now to see about purchasing a spare.
01/10/2003