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 Rob and Buzztiger
Blueprints:
Since our last interview in 2004, a lot has happened. The Diamondback earned many prices and awards and it gave Razer the financial support they needed to develop new products. Now Razer is bringing out a new mouse called Razer Copperhead. Which improvements does the Copperhead have?
 Apple Mouse
The precision that Razer always has been known for based on our whole philosophy from 1998 until today, was that mice needed more precision than the 400dpi and less in the old days, e.g. the apple mouse was 240 dpi. Anybody could go and increase the speed through the drivers but you really get speed without control so our whole point of being was that we could do it in hardware. We just continued to upgrade each time.
Blueprints:
You implemented most of the features in the hardware and not in the drivers?
Razerguy:
You only need the drivers to fine tune. It’s all saved inside the firmware of the mouse. We think that the Copperhead is truly the ultimate as a hardware solution. It is really not even a mouse anymore. It’s got so much advanced technology, so that even windows doesn’t recognize it as mouse anymore. I don’t really know what to call that, perhaps an advanced input device.
You implemented most of the features in the hardware and not in the drivers ? You only need the drivers to fine tune. It’s all saved inside the firmware of the mouse. We think that the Copperhead is truly the ultimate as a hardware solution. It is really not even a mouse anymore. It’s got so much advanced technology, so that even windows doesn’t recognize it as mouse anymore. I don’t really know what to call that, perhaps an advanced input device.
Gamers want more and more precision, they want more accuracy, products that track better, but when we started to increase the precision, which was using dots per inch, we started sending a whole lot more data, and we started stressing really basically the bandwidth of the CPU in terms of going from 400dpi to 2000dpi and then going up to 7000 frames per second. Its just more dataflow, it stresses everything and what happens eventually is that the CPU starts rejecting the 8bit packets of data that’s being sent. It just shuts down.
And what the user sees is skipping and negative acceleration and things like that. So what we actually did here on the copperhead was to fine tune a laserdevice to really perform best on our mousing surfaces.
 ExactMat  System Control
Blueprints:
So the Copperhead is especially designed to perform best on Razer surfaces ?
Razerguy:
The sensor is tuned to a certain nanometer (depth of strucuture) and if you would blow up the exact surface, the surface looks like the moon, kind of hilly. Depending on where your lightsource is, you would have a bright and a dark side of each hill. And we tune the sensor, it actually reads the dark side. And once it reads the dark side it would obviously read the bright side too.
 MX518
No other device has ever really done that and when Logitech said that optical was dead they may be little bit premature because next thing you know they came out with the MX518: Done right a Laser mouse is really a great gaming device.
Blueprints:
The Boomslang already had 2000 dpi, Diamondback has 1600, the Copperhead now offers 2000 dpi.
Is more dpi always better ?
Razerguy:
 Convention
As long as DPI is stable the more is the better. And as long it is in the hardware, and not done with a lens magnification, then more is better. The diference between 1600 dpi and 2000 dpi is pretty dramatic. The diference between 800 and 2000 dpi is really dramatic. And since most mice out there are still 800 dpi, some like the old explorers, a lot of players still playing with a 800dpi mice. I just got back from quakecon where there were guys in the BYOC Area (ed: "Bring your own Computer") that were really using some really antique equipment. And it was interesting to see that.
And it really gives you a better perspective for a company like us to go out to a event like that where there is a lot of mainstream guys: this was not a professional event. These guys don´t have $10,000 equipment like the pros, we saw some real relics in terms of mice, keyboards and headphones. And thats the real world, the real world out there is that not everybody has sponsors to pay for their gear.
Now all of those people would like obviously have devices that enhance their
gaming capability. Copperhead is just another achievement and advancement in technology and from precision standpoint the laser is the best way to go for that. We do have dpi preferences settings from 400 to 800 to 1600 to 2000 dpi. Logitech gives you three choices we actually give you four. The neat thing is this mouse is really programable to each aplication. You can set individual settings through the drivers to your needs by program. For example quake 3 you might have a setting for melee and another for snipping and you can switch back and forth through the profiles during the game. This is something no other mouse offers.
The other thing that is really cool about that is the onboard memory. You can take your mouse and profiles with you. To LAN party, cybercafe, friends house or to a tournament. And you’ve got all your 5 settings stored with you in firmware memory. And when you´re at your home system you can tweak settings to your hearts desire.
Thats how we actually use our drivers. We use them to set up and fine tune the mouse but not for performance. Performance is all built in the hardware, and that´s really important to everybody to remember that, this is something that Razer does better then everybody else. We are always leader in that area. Its ok to have other people to copy us, that’s actually flattering.
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