After having purchased a budget gaming laptop I was tempted to buy a gaming mouse. I know that it was one of the stupidest ideas because I am not even that good at gaming. I am someone you would call as a casual gamer, and that too I only play RTS (real time strategy) games anymore. At least, in the past, I used to play FPS (first person shooter) games which require precise mouse movements. So really there is no need for a gaming mouse for me. This desire for material goods is precisely what I advice everyone to avoid but here I am doing the same mistake. It is one more of those “do what I say, not what I do” sort of things.


Mouse

Anyway, the problem was that the mouse that I was using was working fine in all aspects except that sometimes, the middle click was not triggering properly. Basically when I middle click the scroll wheel, either the button press does not register or sometimes annoyingly, my laptop registers multiple presses. I use the scroll button on a mouse a lot in linux. It lets me paste without using the keyboard (ctrl-v).


So I was looking for a mouse. While searching for a mouse with good rating and quality, most of the time a lot of gaming mice would show up. That got my attention! You see, I never owned a gaming mouse. Not that I ever needed one. After some research I decided to go with the Logitech G102 gaming mouse. You could get a decent mouse for Rs. 500. But no, I had to get myself a gaming mouse which was 3 times as expensive.


Now for the review of the mouse so you know if it is worth it. I have been using the mouse for about 5 months now and I can tell you it is pretty good in terms of quality. But I would have been equally satisfied even if I purchased a Rs. 500 mouse. As I mentioned earlier, I am a casual gamer and from that perspective I did not notice any advantage of using this mouse in my games. The extra high quality tracking was not really needed in any of the games that I play. So advice for you – if you are not a good gamer, don’t bother with a gaming mouse.


The mouse itself is well build, light weight and fits my hand perfectly. For my regular coding and other activities, the mouse is adequate and so was my old mouse. The tracking and scroll wheel on this mouse is much better than my old mouse though. It works perfectly fine in linux. If you need to configure the DPI, light effects or button assignments, you can use piper.


Keyboard

Around the same time, I was looking for a mechanical keyboard. Again, I have never used a mechanical keyboard before. At work, we could order mechanical keyboards and some of my colleagues used to use them. I found the tactile switch’s sound to be quite satisfying when someone was typing. However, I never thought that they will be much better than membrane keyboards. I would later find out how wrong I was. Anyway, while I was looking for the gaming mouse, I also got attracted to mechanical keyboards and started researching them. I love gadgets and this is how I get tempted into materialistic activities.


Long story short, after much research I decided to look for a keyboard with brown switches. For those of you who don’t know (even I didn’t until I did my research), mechanical keyboards come with a variety of key switches. The switches are color coded based on tactile feel, actuation force, key travel and actuation distance. If you like to learn more, watch a video on mechanical keys. I went with the brown switches because they need the least amount of actuation force, so you can tap lightly and the key activates. Also, the actuation distance is low and it is quieter than most other switches while being tactile.


I went with the cheapest available brown switches keyboard that I could find on Amazon. And that turned out to be Cosmic Byte CB-GK-13. I have been using the keyboard for about 5 months now and I just love it. I cannot tell you how nice it feels to type on a mechanical keyboard when compared to membrane keyboard. After using this keyboard I can never go back to the membrane ones. If you do a lot of typing like writing blogs or coding, do yourself a favor and get a mechanical keyboard. Even a cheap one like mine makes a world of difference.


Another useful feature of the keyboard is the backlight. I never had an external keyboard with backlight. This helps me immensely especially in the early mornings or late evenings when the room is not bright enough to read the keys on the keyboard but the light has not faded enough to turn on the lights. However there is one problem with the backlight in Cosmic Byte keyboard that I purchased. If you disconnect the keyboard from the laptop and reconnect, it forgets the keyboard settings (like the backlight animation and brightness). Thankfully my laptop is always on my desk connected to my keyboard so that is not an issue. But when I have to move the laptop and connect it back, I have to do the setup again each time, which take 2 seconds but still it is annoying :). My mouse on the other hand remembers the settings.


Conclusion

I bought both the keyboard and mouse almost at the same time. I was not really looking for a keyboard and I was expecting a lot from the gaming mouse. In the end it was the keyboard that gave me the most satisfaction. Of course this is all my personal opinion but I can tell you that you will notice a significant difference going from a membrane keyboard to even a budget mechanical keyboard. Not so much when moving from a regular mouse to budget gaming mouse.