Saitek Cyborg command unit OR Nostromo Speed pad???

[Mingetuft]

So its that magic time of year again where you take into account what you have a achieved in life... The birthday.

Well I can play the guitar well, I can catch things behind my back, spray liquid through my lip piercing, erm, wake up? Yep can do that with some degree of difficulty, hold down a relationshit, yes but only just cos of 2 much gaming! And all those things you feel good about.

So... when it comes to my birthday I have a problem... What does my girlfriend get me...

Well I have 7 guitars and effects, I have a sweet custom built road bike, nice badminton bat, car, pasta maker blah blah. I have everything I want or need in life it seems!

This leads me to my situation.
For the sake of it I want another crappy bit of plastic to clutter my desktop and I thought "why not get one of those command thingies to further my dust collection on"?

So any tips or advice?

Both of these have what I'm looking for which is a thumb button to replace WASD thus freeing up all those juicy buttons for my spells/macros (mmmmMMMmmMmmMmm)
I'm leaning towards saitek as it has adjustable bits and bobs on it so I can make it feel goooood. But the Nostro has a tasty lookin thumb control!!!
Most important is that it stays in 1 place when I'm using it!!! Remember the MS strategic commander? NIGHTMARE!!!

Arghhh! Help!!!

LINKS:
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=157024#
http://www.saitek.com/uk/prod/cyborgcommand.htm

Jae

[Babarackus]

I've been using the Nostromo for over a year now and I couldn't do without it. I took a great deal of getting use to but it's sure worth it.

BA

[Rosati]

I have seen the Nostromo and diffrent gaming stores and never understood what its function was for. Now I get it and I can see how one of them lil dodads would come in pretty handy.

[Soulzar]

I've had my Nostromo n52 TE order and back ordered for 3 months+ now.. getting annoying but early april is new projected date. I hear this model is superior to the normal n52

[Gritz]

I've heard mixed reviews on the n52te - well, mainly one complaint - there's apparently no 'unshifted mode' now. So instead of 4 modes (no lights, red, green, blue), there's only 3 modes now (red, green, blue).

I personally don't use any of the modes (besides the unshifted/no lights) since I bound ctrl/alt/shift to the D pad, but it's something to keep in mind if you are planning to upgrade.

I haven't picked one up yet, though I probably grab one in the next few months.

[RomaGoth]

I have never really looked at these things before, but this posting has peaked my interest. I am having all sorts of problems in PvP because I am constantly getting messages like "You are out of range", or "You can't do that yet", or "You are too far away". It drives me nuts. I am mostly a clicker, I don't use macros. As a matter of fact, I don't even have any keybindings right now. Not real sure how to bind keys and/or make macros. I imagine it would make my life easier, at least in PvP settings.

I looked at the above gamingpads, but still not sure how they really work. Are they comfortable? Are the keys easy to reach? How do you use one alongside your regular keyboard (i.e. chatting)?

[xTAGx Wizard]

I have been using the Nostromo since I started playing WoW, can't live w/o it. Works awesome. I only switch to the keyboard to chat, but most of the time I'm in voice anyhow.......

[Gritz]

Yes, the n52 is 1000x times better than playing with a keyboard. The only downside is that if I don't have it with me when traveling (which I usually do, but occasionally forget), WoW is pretty much unplayable for me.

I have set up a keyboard layout for my laptop, using the profiles settings in Bongos3, but it's very hard retraining muscle memory for 50-60 spells/macros/abilities.

[Korth]

I certainly recommend a gamepad of some sort. For the the deciding factor was that I travel a lot and the gamepad was the only way to make my laptop client as easy to play as my desktop client at home.

In other words, there's no difference if you use a properly-configured gamepad between machines, as long as you bring the gamepad profile with you.

That said, I tried the Nostromo n52 and it felt solid enough, but I personally had difficulty adjusting to a shift-mode device.

I ended up with the Ideazon Fang which admittedly has a few more buttons but is comfortable and doesn't rely on shift modes to access your various functions.

I do have n52-using friends who swear by it, and I'm sure in the end it comes down to personal taste.

[Kuroshiro]

Hi, I was searching for cyborog command unit profiles for WoW when I came across this thread. Given my experience with the n52te, I felt compelled to register and post.

I bought a belkin n52te yesterday, played with it for about 4 hours, took it back this morning and bought a saitek unit. There is a world of difference between the two. So far I'm a lot happier with the saitek. Here's why.

The programming software for the n52te SUCKS. Whomever wrote it should be shot in the face, rezzed and shot again. Trying to do any kind of macro recording is nigh impossible, something you MUST do if you want to program a key with anything modified. (shift-1, alt-5, etc) The Saitek UI leaves a lot to be desired as well, but it's just complex, and works.

The thumb stick on the n52te is a d-pad, nothing more. The thumb stick on the saitek is an analog joystick. As such, you can program what are called bands which gives you the ability to program sensitivity. For example, a given axis is mapped from 0% (all the way in one direction) to 100% (all the way in the other direction)..I have 0-30% mapped to left arrow and up arrow (for X and Y axis respectively), and 70-100% mapped to right arrow and down arrow (again, for X and Y axis) You can adjust the ranges to find the right amount of "throw" that works for you. You can't do that with the n52te, and I felt there was too much throw with its thumbstick.

The n52te has a single button under the dpad, and it's a big button with only a single post that it sits on and has a large amount of vertical travel. Because of the angle and position of my finger, when I would push it, it would frequently be on the edge of the button, which would push slightly sideways against the post and spring and cause the button to get off kilter occasionally. The saitek has 2 buttons, that don't require as much travel to push and are smaller so they don't get off kilter.

The thumbstick/buttons are on a plate that is adjustable. Don't like the angle of the dpad on the n52te? Tough noogies.

The n52te has less buttons (15 versus 20) plus the saitek has an additional button used as a shift button. It sits right below the ball of your hand, so you can push it without moving any fingers, and that gets you 20 more keys, effectively.

n52te is $70, saitek is $40, and in my opinion, the saitek has better construction.

One thing I REALLY liked about the n52te though was the fact you can save a profile to the unit itself, which allows you to take it to a computer without the profile editor and still use it.
I don't want to tell happy n52te users they're suckers, because if it works for you that's great. My experience with it though was not very good.

Again, my apologies for butting into your forum, but I just needed to post on my experience with these controllers.