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Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard
Setup
Setting up a keyboard is quite simple, and while I was briefly perplexed with why this keyboard had two USB cords, plugging them in was quite easy. There are headphone and microphone jacks as well, so you can have your microphone and headphones hooked up at your keyboard instead of behind your computer; this is useful if you play a lot of games with a headset on to talk to your teammates (or talk smack to your enemies) because it's more convenient to plug/unplug, and it allows for more cord slack. So I headed over to the Razer website to download the drivers and software for the keyboard. It was a quick install; the only noteworthy items were that the keyboard needs to be plugged in before you run the setup, and the drivers are unsigned so you get a warning message about installing unsigned drivers.     Testing Keyboards aren't really benchmarkable, nor can you provide illustrative graphics by which to judge their performance. What I can test is the functionality and how well the provided software works with the various environments I can provide. One of the first things I tried was to tinker with the replaceable keys. I could not only replace the L and R keys assigned on either side of the keyboard, I could replace normal keys with each other (assuming the keys are the same size). So you could rearrange the letters on your keyboard if it pleases you (that would make for a really good office prank if you have coworkers that can't touch type). This is, of course, most useful on the macro keys, where you can replace such cryptic symbols as "L2" and "R5" with a key that has a picture of a gun or a grenade, for example. Replacing keys was simple, just use the included tool to hook around the key, pull up to remove it and push down on another one in its place. After I loaded the software, the first thing I did was check out the media keys. Once I went into the profile and set it for iTunes, I was able to use the quarter note two button and it would open iTunes. Nice, but not that useful usually (I just go next/previous track). The play and stop buttons worked as they should as well. However the next and previous buttons didn't always work. It turns out when coverflow layout is selected for iTunes, the next and previous buttons will scroll through the covers, instead of choosing the next or previous song. I don't believe it's a problem with iTunes because I have never experienced this problem with my other keyboard which has the media controls (and also doesn't ask what media player I'm using, it just uses the appropriate Windows calls). The shuffle button didn't work as it should either - while it would toggle the shuffle status, it would also fire an ALT-S command to iTunes which would bring up the Store drop down menu over the top of my current application. The volume rocker did work as expected and so did the mute button (these two buttons affect the windows sound system, not the media playing application). The buttons of the left side of the keyboard had their share of problems too - the sleep button (denoted Zzz) didn't seem to do anything; perhaps the button itself was taking a nap. The internet button (denoted by the home icon) would bring me a new window of my default browser (Firefox), as expected. The rotate button, along with the zoom rocker and the 100% scale button all worked as they should within Photoshop as well as my web browser - allowing me to increase or decrease the font size of the webpage and then restore it back to normal when I was done. I don't use Photoshop that much, so the zoom functionality wasn't terribly useful for me personally, but being able to increase/decrease the font size in my web browser with the push of a button is quite nice. One of the gripes I have with this keyboard is the multi-stroking that can occur with certain keys. I've noticed it with the 1 and Q keys, along with the enter key on the number pad. This is probably not a systematic problem with these keyboards, but I do find it annoying that I have to be very careful when pushing the 1 or Q keys to make sure it only registers once. If you happen to have a multi-stroking key in your password, you may get much more frustrated because it's harder to tell if a key press has registered multiple times if all you see are asterisks. The keyboard also has USB ports, and they worked fine. I was able to plug in my USB flash drive and copy files to and from, along with syncing and charging an iPod Nano. As I mentioned above, the auxiliary USB plug allows the keyboard to source more power to the USB ports on the keyboard. Be aware though, that the USB ports along with the audio board have to be close in proximity however since there is only about a foot of slack where the cords are broken out between the two USB plugs and the headphone and microphone plugs. This shouldn't be an issue if you plug it into the back of a motherboard, but it's important to note. One of the other things Razer talks about with the Tarantula is the "anti-ghosting" capability, which allows you to press more than three keys at the same time without having a problem. I tested this by pressing and holding keys until they stopped registering new key presses. I got up to six keys until it would stop registering new key presses to Windows. They promise ten, but I was unable to figure out key combinations to get that high - I tried letters, numbers, symbols, etc, but nothing would allow me to get up to more than six keys registering at one time. The programming of macros was easy, just select the key you want to assign the macro to, and then press the keys and insert delays as needed. One of the other interesting items is the onboard memory feature. The first five profiles you can program onto the keyboard, and then take it with you to a different computer and it'll work without any drivers or software installed. It's a neat feature, but I guess I'm not in the target market since I don't see a place where I'd have any use for it. Perhaps if you go to a LAN party where you don't bring your own computer but you bring your peripherals! Outside of the five profiles that can be stored on the keyboard, 100 total profiles can be created using the software that comes with the unit. While I don't find this feature particularly useful myself, I did make sure it worked by taking the keyboard to another PC and my macro, which typed "asdf," worked. Finally within each profile there are two keymaps, so you can alternate between keymaps within one profile. This could be useful in a game where you can play a few different roles, or in my case, a flight simulator with one keymap for the aircraft on the ground taxiing around, and another set for when the aircraft is in flight.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Taking a Closer Look Page 3: Setup & Testing Page 4: Conclusion 
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Add Comment
1 User Comment 1 - Posted by
PsychoSnowMan
on May 6, 2007 - 8:01 pm I've read some other reviews that have said you need to upgrade the firmware for the anti-ghosting to work. It might be a good idea to try this out and update the review. Also can the backlighting be disabled? I sleep in the same room as my computer, and my mouse, joystick, and stereo already have LEDs that shine all night. Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
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