Peripherals News - Page 22

The Ascalon H7L gaming mouse joins Tesoro's fleet of gaming peripherals, and is specifically built to meet the needs of high-performance gaming.

Tesoro's new Ascalon H7L gaming mouse ticks all the right boxes, featuring a 32-bit ARM Cortex processor that enables 6400 True DPI and a nice polling rate of 1000 Hz to ensure efficient aiming and 1ms response times.

Shaped in a sleek, ergonomic design, the mouse is a perfect fit for RTS and FPS gaming thanks to its six custom-programmable buttons that can be set to trigger a variety of functions, along with an extra 2x trigger button. Thanks to its onboard Omron switches and a precision gaming sensor, the Ascalon can ensure 200 ips motion detection with 50g acceleration.

We live in a world of self-driving cars in our future, but what about self-parking chairs? Yeah, it's a thing - and of course, only in Japan.

Nissan has posted a new video to their YouTube page, teasing their new Intelligent Parking Chairs. The new self-parking chairs use an array of wireless signals, ceiling-mounted, motion-detecting cameras, and a Roomba-like circular chassis with wheels at the bottom of each chair.

The video shows the self-parking chairs being 'parked' once the owner claps their hands, with dozens of chairs moving by themselves and parking at their desks. At the end of the day, it looks like Nissan is really pushing its new Intelligent Park Assist self-parking car technology, but in a really cool way. It works, because it's awesome.

Mad Catz is in trouble. That is, they likely didn't quite meet the financial expectations for this fiscal quarter, so as a result, the CEO, Darren Richardson and the company chairman, Thomas Brown, have decided to step down from their positions.

The peripheral company has had declining profits for some time though they were waiting on the wider release and potential success of Rock Band 4 before making any large internal changes. Rock Band 4, however, wasn't quite the huge success they had hoped for despite being number 10 in the UK in October. This necessitated the change in leadership.

Karen McGinnis, the former CFO of Mad Catz, is entering the role of president and CEO while Tyson Marshall, a former attorney for the company, has been placed in the vice president of business affairs role. John Nyholt, another veteran of the company, is now the chairman. All of these changes come just days before they're expected to report their fiscal results for the first quarter of 2016.

Logitech has toned down the overt aggressive "gaming" design with their newest addition to their G-line of keyboards. The G810 Orion is a more subdued mechanical keyboard that still has the gaming accolades of the more, noticeable, Orion G910 Orion Spark.

Just like its big brother, it has the same Romer-G switches that have increased measured durability compared to CherryMX switches as well as a shorter press, with an actuation point at only 1.5mm deep. And it'll have the per-key RGB lighting as well, letting you customize to your hearts content. And just in case, you'll be able to disable individual keys, such as the Windows key or even the ALT key. This can be quite useful in frantic gaming sessions.

Of course mechanical keyboards are nearly a must-have for the modern gamer, though which type of switch is a personal preference. Some like the quick actuation that comes with these Romer-G's or even CherryMX Red's or others, while others might prefer a bit longer of a press with less force required. It's such a personalized preference that you almost have to try everything to determine what you like. It's a trial and error affair. But now Logitech has a more subdued selection for those looking for something a little less garish.

Some of Apple's AC adapters have been found "in very rare cases" to break and then cause electrical shock when touched. Consequently, they've recalled them and offered up a free exchange program.

The adapters in question are two prong devices intended to be used in Continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Argentina and Brazil. They shipped with Macs, some iOS devices, and the Apple World Travel Adapter Kit. Adapters with a 4 or 5 characters or no characters on the inside slot where it attached to an Apple power adapter are affected, whereas those with a country code are not, as seen in the image below.

For further help on identifying if yours is affected, hit the source. There you can also set up a refund.

As announced in a recent press release, American company Das Keyboard has launched its all-new Alpha-Zulu mechanical switches alongside the X40 and M50 'Pro Gaming' keyboard and mouse products.

These new switches come packed with gold contacts and a 1.7mm actuation, giving a similar point to the well-known Cherry Red setup. The X40 keyboard further offers a 'space camo' color scheme, five programmable macro keys, USB 2.0 pass-through ports, a lengthy 6.5ft braided cable and red backlighting. This product provides users with two switch options - tactile and linear. These switch options mean that gamers are either able to get an extra-responsive product set up for StarCraft II and OSU in the tactile mode, or scale things back with the linear model for a quieter experience.

The M50 mouse provides users with a tailored experience that Das Keyboard claims is perfect for games requiring super fast clicks and precision. Packing a 6400 GPI 4G sensor and nine programmable buttons, this new product further provides six gaming profiles, a diecast aluminum shoe and 4D tilt scroll wheel.

Synaptics is helping to bring fingerprint readers and biometric safeguards to the masses. They're making it accessible and not just an afterthought, something easy to put on any notebook because no modifications are needed with the integration of a sensor into their trackpads.

And now they're breaking into an entirely different market with ThermalTake in this latest venture. They've gone and placed one of their IronVeil fingerprint sensors into a mouse, giving even gamers easy access to biometric. And this idea is full of untapped potential, not from a marketing standpoint, but from a security standpoint.

Biometrics represent a distinctive authentication method that can save time and potentially money. It's not perfect and spoofing, as well as other issues regarding how different types of fingerprint sensors work, do exist but as part of a multi-factor authentication scheme, it's perfect. Because it's easy. And it generally works well.

France's ministry of culture and communication says it's "nearly impossible to correctly write French" on its current keyboards, and so has teamed up with a standardization group -- AFNOR -- to create a new norm. This summer, that norm will be shown to the public, at which time feedback will be taken and considered for potential further iteration.

Where keyboards in the US and Europe use the QWERTY layout (with rare exception), French keyboards (like the one pictured here) utilize an AZERTY layout and suffer from a lack of standardization, so you'll see all kinds of variations from manufacturer to manufacturer, and what is seen will often be non-intuitive. As a result, what should be simple, nearly effortless actions like typing accented capital letters can be frustrating, obscure, and even impossible, leading to citizens taking liberties with the language and sometimes incorrectly expressing ideas as a result. Recent studies have shown more spelling errors among French students, which some blame at least partly on this keyboard issue.

Curiously, the new standard will be voluntary to manufacturers, the exception being for computers used within the field of public administration.

Intel had a massive area in the main hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES this year. And they had a tremendous amount of technology to show off as well. One of the big things for Intel this year, is that of their Real Sense technology. They're very excited about it and have plenty of design wins to bring it to the masses.

They showed off Razer's new Stargazer camera, having a popular streamer sitting there actually playing live against three others. They showed how the dynamic background removal worked, and we were pleasantly surprised with it's effectiveness.

But there were other uses for Real Sense as well, such as with a gigantic interactive all where you could coax a school of fish into moving by simply using your hands. It was all quite impressive, though perhaps in the way that tech demos sometimes are. I can see the validity of the technology and where it can be useful for interacting with, well, anything. But hopefully companies, museums and even aquariums adopt Real Sense, because it could be another type of revolution that we never knew we needed. Razer is helping to show us that there are uses for the technology aside from 3D modeling your face.

Stated as the "fifth consecutive year that Logitech products have been awarded GOOD DESIGN awards" in a recently issued press release, this peripheral giant has taken home five awards this time around.

Receiving awards for its Wireless Mouse M280, ConferenceCam Connect, Keys-To-Go, Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard K480 and the MX Master Wireless Mouse, Logitech president and CEO Bracken Darrell stated that "these additional design award wins help underscore how design is at the core of what we do at Logitech."

The GOOD DESIGN Awards are presented each year by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and are in partnership with the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies.