Gigabyte GM-M8000 Mouse - A GHOST Story
by Gary Key on June 15, 2009 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
We had a very interesting package show up at the front door a couple of weeks ago. No, it was not our new supply order from ShamWoW or even that P55/Lynnfield box we recently reviewed. It was a mouse designed and built by a motherboard company. Specifically, it was from Gigabyte and included a keyboard we will discuss later. Of course, there were a couple of motherboards and video cards in the box but our attention was naturally drawn to the new shiny trinket in the tricked out package.
Normally a mouse would not elicit such excitement but since I change mice about as often the US elects a Democratic president one could easily forgive me for being a bit too eager to give this product a through thrashing. Honestly, I had no idea that Gigabyte even offered mice but after checking out their PC peripheral page, I was impressed with the range of products offered. In fact, Gigabyte offers a total of nine mice ranging from an entry level wireless optical mouse to several gaming mice including our GM-M8000 sample.
The GM-M8000 is part of Gigabyte’s new GHOST gaming series of products. This particular mouse features the AVAGO 6090 Laser sensor featuring adjustable sensitivity from 400 dpi to 4000 dpi, Gigabyte’s GHOST Engine featuring 8KB of onboard memory, GHOST software suite, 16-bit wide data path, five independently programmable buttons, four level on-the-fly DPI adjustment, USB report rate tuning, and an adjustable weight system with 38 grams of metal weights.
It all sounds impressive; the key is if this mouse actually works as advertised. So, let’s find out if this GHOST is the real thing or just another Casper wannabe.
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Samus - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
I love my corded OCZ Equalizer. It also cost less than 20 bucks and has been blinking along that lonely mousepad trail for years.cosmotic - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Are you serious? It's hideous! Why are they custom painting their driver window? You should not be reinforcing this sort of crap behavior.teohhanhui - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Logitech does that too...mindless1 - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Does that REALLY matter?aeternitas - Monday, June 15, 2009 - link
Some people like their UIs to be standardized. I for one agree. Im getting sick of utilities that think they are unique by giving me a hideous UI.It doesnt effect crucial things, but it DOES matter.
ahmshaegar - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Even Microsoft doesn't standardize their UI; why should Gigabyte?niva - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
Umm... actually they do, everything in the windows OS has a generic look and feel ranging from explorer to the admin tools. I totally agree with this comment, Asus does the same crap too (example: the asus update utility.) I'm all for allowing apps to be skinned but they should come with a default skin that utilizes the OSs selected look and feel. If you're going to skin something by default at least do a good job at it.MamiyaOtaru - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 - link
They do? Media Player and Office spring to mind immediately as apps that don't match the others.aeternitas - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - link
WMP and Office are consistent with what they are doing and with the general Vista pioneered UI. When you up a window to open up a file, you dont see a bullshit Win 3.1 menu system pop up. You see a standardized and easily manageable windows from the MS framework.Stop arguing, you're wrong.
ahmshaegar - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link
A year later! I'm baaack!And that last comment was highly unnecessary. Boo hoo. But anyway...
Let's dig into your comment. You said something about consistent for what they are doing. Well, okay, but I was under the impression we were talking about consistency with Windows (meaning consistency with Explorer, the Windows file manager.) So I'm not sure what consistency for what they are doing means. You also mention they're consistent with Vista. I'm not aware of Vista making use of Ribbons extensively. And then you bring up Windows 3.1-style dialog boxes. What does that have to do with anything?
"You see a standardized and easily manageable windows from the MS framework." Okay. But if you grew up with Windows 3.1, that would be easily manageable. And Windows 3.1 was standardized, too, to some extent. And since it's a Microsoft product, wouldn't it also be some kind of "MS framework"?
Moving on....
We have Windows Explorer (by that, I mean the file manager.) We have Office. We have WMP. We have many random applications. In general, if you run some random old application, it's going to look like Windows Explorer.
Of course Office is generally internally consistent, and so is WMP. But the point is that Office is not consistent with Windows. Now, I haven't used the latest versions of Office, (can't afford it, so I'm stuck with OpenOffice) but I am aware it uses that Ribbons interface or whatever they call it. I think some other apps use ribbons... Paint? But the point is it's not consistent with Explorer.
So Office is its own program, if you will, and so is this mouse driver. The mouse driver is not consistent with Explorer, and neither is Office. In that sense, they're not consistent.
On the other hand, if you want to change the boundaries of the argument and say that Office is internally consistent with itself, then I guess we'll just have to say this mouse driver is internally consistent with itself.
But let's forget about consistency for a moment. I couldn't care less if all my apps are consistent, because certain specialized apps may require a different UI paradigm for maximum efficiency. If the UI allows me to work better, then I'm all for it. Of course, the tradeoff is a learning curve, but life is full of those. Unfortunately, I can't argue that this UI is better.
Basically, think Media Center. Explorer and other desktop applications are designed for use at a desk, or at least on a computer monitor. The user's eyes are generally no more than half a meter away. Media Center is for use on a TV, so of course the interface is different (and not consistent with the rest of Windows.)
But the argument was merely about consistency, and on that point, we have Office and WMP differing from Explorer (the file manager) for reasons that are debatable, and Media Center differing from Explorer for good reason.
Anyway, I'm aware nobody is ever going to read this comment, but it had to be posted.