Fire and Ice are in the name

Since I'm the curious type, I decided to pick up a CoolerMaster Inferno, another mouse, just to see how much I liked it, and to figure out whether or not my other mouse (the XL-760H) just didn't want to play nice with my DAC.

As it turns out, the Inferno doesn't get in the way of my DAC throwing out audio, so I have to say that the A4Tech mouse either draws lots more power than it should, or it somehow likes hogging all the USB ports on the interface it's connected to. Yuck.

So, here I am with a $40 Inferno, comparing it to a $30 XL-760H that forced me to buy a $15 USB card. I had originally intended this venture to be cheap, but here I am, spending more than I had originally intended, some of it because I was just plain curious.

But let me talk about the CoolerMaster Inferno. First things first... I'm getting used to it, but I think this mouse is slightly too big for my hands (not surprising, given my hands are a little small). It was made so that the entire mouse would fit in the palm of your hand, and I suppose as a result, it flares out a bit at the base. This is actually the major thing I have against the shape of the mouse besides its length, as the base of my palm ends up trying to wrap around the base of the mouse, but ends up being just shy.

If your hands are bigger than mine, however, I can really see how this mouse would be comfortable. The buttons are kinda like the Xornet's, which means that anywhere your fingers can click, you can bet it's like touching soft baby skin. The standard buttons feel so smooth and gentle, I don't mind clicking them for no other reason than to feel them, and they feel light (especially the side buttons). The mouse wheel... goes down kinda easy, though still not as loose as I'd like. However, it is thick, which means that most of the pressure from pushing isn't on a thin line on your finger like on many other mice - meaning it doesn't kill your finger as much to middle click.

Button-wise, the dang thing is full of them, and nearly all of them are programmable. It has four (!) extra programmable buttons, two of which are DPI switching buttons by default, and a profile switch button so you don't have to reconfigure the mouse every time you switch games. Most of the buttons on the mouse can be changed (don't think the profile button can be), so you can program these buttons to do what you want for whatever game you're playing. As well, they have an extra button, called the Storm Tactics button... which is essentially a shift key for your macros. In addition to programming individual buttons, you can program macros for this Storm Tactics button plus one or two other buttons hit simultaneously. Sounds great, maybe slightly overkill, but the Storm Tactics button is actually a bit of a pain to reach. I guess you could get used to it.

Let's get to the downsides, though. First of all, I personally think a better spot for the left macro button would have been right up against the mouse wheel, since my fingers shift naturally to the right and... unnaturally to the left. Second, well... you can cycle between five different DPI settings, but seriously, why would you ever need more than two? Having three is just asking to get confused in the thick of things, when you're wondering why or if your mouse isn't moving as fast or as slow as you need it. Thankfully, you can set your buttons to go to a specific DPI setting instead of DPI increase/decrease, then just configure two settings: one for normal use, and the other for those special cases that you'll see like 0.1% of the time.

The last complaint is the software that you use to program everything. I don't know who thought this would be a good thing to do, but every time you load the darn thing up, it resets your Windows mouse speed to like... three ticks from the slowest it can get in the Control Panel. Set your mouse speed to whatever you want, any time you want to reprogram your mouse or even check out what you programmed into it before, you'll have to open up the Control Panel and reset your mouse speed unless you happen to like that speed. Seriously, what is with this?!?

In the end, the Inferno is basically a good mouse, it's just got a lot of stuff tacked on to it, and some of it feels right and some of it doesn't. I actually feel the extra features aren't really accessible for how many there are - the right macro button is the only extra button that feels natural to hit. And well, the software is actually a total pain to use just because someone thought they knew how users wanted to configure a mouse better than the users themselves. Just for the record, that sort of thinking almost never works out.

If you ignore all the extras (which you actually can do), it's a nice mouse and really comfortable if your palm can handle it... it's just $40. Palm grippers might feel right at home with this mouse, though it can be awkwardly fingertipped if you want to.

So, having said all that, now I have a decision to make. I could go for the Inferno: smooth yet slightly bulky shape, a plethora of features the likes of which I will probably not use all of since there's so many, and software with which to set those features that I'll try to use as little as possible since it's a pain to use. Alternatively, I can go for the XL-760H: simplicity with a more natural shape and peach fuzz exterior, with a stubborn mouse wheel, a programmable button dedicated to getting around said stubborn mouse wheel, in a package that necessitates me getting a separate USB PCI card.