Cyborg R.A.T. Mouse

Well, I bit the bullet and ordered one from BestBuy so that if the Z-axis problems are horrific, I can return it to a local store.

@Mad Catz Rich, is there any chance of people who are bothered by the Z-axis problems getting a replacement mouse with a different sensor if MadCatz does go that route?
 
Put the same sensor in it that the G9x uses and I'll give one a try for sure. Ergonomically it could very well be the best mouse on the planet. Actually that's the one thing that most people seem to like even if they do have problems with the Phillips Twin-Eye sensor.
 
All those adjustments and mice makers still aren't putting enough buttons on mice. It's still the same two button + back/forward buttons on the side mouse.

I have a 5 year old mouse with 11 buttons on it. Why can't more mice have that?
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If you want a crapton of buttons, I guess you can buy that Razer Naga. I personally don't need any more than left and right click, mousewheel click, and a thumb back and forward.
 
DanishDevil said:
Well, I bit the bullet and ordered one from BestBuy so that if the Z-axis problems are horrific, I can return it to a local store.

@Mad Catz Rich, is there any chance of people who are bothered by the Z-axis problems getting a replacement mouse with a different sensor if MadCatz does go that route?
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I'm afraid not.
 
Lanx said:
From what info i can find about the "g50 vanguard" it's a wireless mouse with charging cable ala razer mamba.

it's designed ergonomic so no adjusting.

it looks to be just some student's design render
http://www.coroflot.com/public/indi...ry=158&c=1&set_id=479378&individual_id=246812

so unless logitech puts up a press release, don't get hopes up.
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Logitech has had the charging cable design for some time. Perhaps even before the Mamba. I know my MX1100 has this feature.
 
I ordered one of these. The 'sniper' button sold it for me.

Is there any issues running this mouse in conjunction with a standard Microsoft mouse? I often use my left hand for mousing, and I keep an old typical laser mouse for that. I have a Logitech MX518 for my right hand and the two seem to live together just fine. Will the R.A.T. be OK alongside a second mouse?

thanks

- EDIT: I canceled my order, after reading through this whole thread.
 
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I'm not a massive huge gamer due to time (family), but I do like to play as much as anyone else. I have not had any problem with the sensor from a precision standpoint. Yes it moves when lifted just like the Mamba, but it's very exact on finding the mark. My Mamba is always off a bit when trying to find the place you want to click. I'm using a Coolermaster mat. I haven't tried moving the thumb yet I don't think I really need to. I have to say the mouse is solidly made. One of the best I've ever had from a build standpoint. I think Mad Catz got that right now if some of these issues others are having are address then I think you should give Mad Catz the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to improve their quality. Just my 2 cents.:rolleyes:
 
My R.A.T. 7 is supposed to arrive today. I'll definitely be posting my impressions. I want to love this mouse so badly.
 
I emailed the dude that designed this Logitech G50 to see if it's real or not.
 
DanishDevil said:
My R.A.T. 7 is supposed to arrive today. I'll definitely be posting my impressions. I want to love this mouse so badly.
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I've struggled with this mouse so much... I wanted to love it too, however for me it's become counter-productive to my rsi/cts.

I've invested in an ergonomic workstation and super low drag highly responsive mouse (so i don't have to whip my mouse around everywhere) along w/ that i want tweaks such as near zero force drag w/ teflon skates and the flatest smoothest surface available via icemat glass (now icemat sx full metal which i'll keep).

Why go through all that trouble if the sensor is worse than my old death adder? To point, I am NOT talking about the "lift issue". I'm simply talking about accuracy.

I do not game on my pc anymore, i work on my pc for 8/10 hours a day, then i browse whatever for a bit. With my death addler, I can stop on a dime to the pixel, actually I can do this using my fiances(used to be mine) old 510, I can do this with an old copperhead and even the stupid creative fatality mouse (it was almost free after rebate, and is my kitchen laptop mouse), even with a bluetooth logitech mouse for my htpc. I cannot do this with the RAT.

Is anyone who is currently using the RAT right now experiencing these issues of not being able to stop and be pin point accurate? i can be near pixel accurate with any of my old mice, but not the RAT, i've tried each and every dpi setting withing 100 of each other, from 800 all the way up to stupid 4800 dpi (past that it became totally unusable). I don't know how to explain it, except by saying, i try to click on a link, and i'm 2 pixels off from activating the link, i try to highlight a sentence and i'm always 1 character off (with any other mouse i'd get every character i intended to get). If there was a test for accuracy i'd like to know, i've taken muscle memory out of the equation, i've taken getting used to a new steelseries SX pad out of the equation.
 
Just got mine from UPS. Unboxed it, and it looks pretty cool, although there are a couple of things that I'm surprised to see happen. 1: the box is nearly impossible to figure out how to open for the average person and there's no "open here" markings anywhere, and 2: the weight cartridge holder rubs against the palm grip when you (un)screw it.

I'll also be moving from a Deathadder that has served me well (middle mouse click now only works intermittently with a HARD press). Can't remember where I bought it from to get an invoice, or Razer said they'd replace it. After two years. No joke. Keep your receipts kids!
 
I don't understand how this mouse can get so many negative comments here, especially when it got a "10" in the latest 'Maximum PC' magazine. If the lifting issue is valid, then this mouse should never have received a 10................

I started paying attention to my own personal mousing habits, and sure enough, I am always lifting the mouse a little to re-position it. It's one of those little things you may be unaware of. So it appears the CAT 7 will not work for me, which makes me very sad...... :(


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Well have you noticed that Maximum PC Magazine is one of the very few reviews out there? You can't really count on reliability when there's only 1 well-known company reviewing a product.
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I've used this R.A.T. 7 for about a half hour, and I have a few things to say. Namely, it's horrible.

  1. The adjustment for the angle of the left side of the mouse (thumb area) will move easily even if it's tightened down to full. It moves through the full range of motion. After about 2 minutes of use, it will move from all the way out to all the way in from the light pressure that it takes from using it.
  2. The back and forward buttons are too long, and the back button is placed too far back on my hand. If I move the palm rest back far enough so that they feel better, I lose the precision aim button, and the pinky area is all wrong.
  3. The pinky rest hurts my pinky worse than nothing else being there. There is also no natural place for your ring finger to rest. I've got a horrible hand cramp that I haven't ever gotten from a mouse, especially this quickly. Way to turn this mouse's main selling point for me into a pain in the ass (pinky).
  4. The DPI rocker is nearly impossible to push forward with your fingers while they are properly positioned on the mouse.
  5. The tracking is horrid. Not only does it go down and to the right while lifting and repositioning, but it is inaccurate to the point of many mis-clicks even at 1800DPI.
  6. The thumb wheel is just a stupid idea. It is horribly placed, and you either have to move your entire hand to the right on the mouse in order to be able to use it, or your thumb hits your index finger before you can even scroll, or you can point your thumb and scroll with the tip of your finger, but it is very uncomfortable.

Long story short, back to Best Buy it goes. Only took me a half hour to realize how bad of a fit this mouse is for me. Pardon the ergonomic pun.

Either I've got hugely deformed hands, or my clone was used to mold the shape of the Deathadder. I'm off to search for a good deal on a 3.5G.
 
I've been an avid reader of MaximumPC since it was Boot 01, of course after a while they became less and less Maximum as you can even see their Dream Machines were built so nasitly (cable management? only this year). But of course it makes for great bathroom material. In any event the reviewer, the author of the RAT 7 review is the online editor Alex Castle, basically he's just a webmaster, not even a hardware guy.
 
Interesting to know.

This mouse is a step in the right direction, but not nearly refined enough to be worth its asking price.
 
Have the R.A.T. and I like it so far, much more comfortable than my G9.
 
Well in the Logitech forum a Logitech person said the Vanguard G50 is not real. Who knows though he could just be denying due to NDA.
 
doubt it, the mouse seems like a render, it is from a student and even seems impossible to move, imo it always seemed like a trackball w/o the top ball.
 
I wonder if Logitech has talked to him about using their name even if it is a project.
 
I will be getting one once I get my new laptop. The ol' Sidewinder mouse will be used with the laptop, while the craziness of the RAT will be used on my computer. Pretty much just for show.:eek:
 
I want to mess with this mouse before I buy it. Anyone know of any physical stores that have one on display? Didn't see it at Best Buy or Fry's.
 
am i the only guy who prefers to have his thumb actually make contact with the surface?

this thumb tray - which seems to be one of the only non-modular (removable) pieces - would make me need to change my grip.

otherwise, i think the adjustable length is innovative and actually has me considering this.
but having to change my thumb from surface-contact to mouse-only-contact is a deal breaker.
 
Lanx said:
So reading IanM's post i decided to test out why the rat moved and the razor imperator did not, and i have the answer, again why am I testing this? this should have long been done b4 it was put out to the public.

So the reason why it skips when click is because of the thumb adjust issue on the rat. if you actually use the thumb adjustment and tighten the thumb part, the rat now becomes UNplumb/ UNflush and it now becomes wobbly, because i guess when you tighten it, the thumb part presses down vertically and makes the rat lift like 0.5mm up on the thumbside.

you can test this out too, loose the thumb adjustment (so that it freely moves left and right) and your rat will be plumb/flush against the pad.

So i have a solution, don't tighten the thumb adjustment and leave it loose, this way you'll always have a flush/plumb mouse and it won't skip, because when it does become unflush/unplumb it wobbles with every click and there is your z-axis problem.

This couldn't have been tested before it was released to the public?


video inc soon again, i had to do this outside b/c it was getting dark (for natural sunlight) so i put the frosted glass on a table (plumb/flush mouse pad) and you can see it more clearly illustrated this way.
tighten the thumb adjustment and now your rat is not plumb/flush anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkoeSFLy7Ak
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Lanx I just wanted to say thanks, for putting in all this effort to investigate what was going on with this thing, and even putting up videos clearly illustrating the issue.

I was absolutely certain I was going to buy this mouse as soon as it became available locally, but now that this has come up, I'm not sure anymore.

I might've been okay with these problems if the mouse was $24.99, but they want $100 for this thing. It's unbelievable that you would find these basic design/production flaws in such an expensive mouse!
 
I wouldn't use the thing if somebody paid me $100 to be perfectly honest. Take every other problem aside, the mouse cursor crawls to one corner when the mouse is sitting still. At least the one I bought did.

I'm usually not this harsh on products, but for the asking price, I wouldn't want anybody to waste their money on this mouse until it's improved.
 
I have had this mouse for about a week now (RAT 7), and my biggest gripe is the software. Why can't I rebind some of the extra buttons? Like the button below the scroll wheel, to the left of the left click, and the red "Sniper mode" button. I don't need the extra features that these buttons offer, but I would greatly like to bind them to alternates. Also, I would like to setup the thumb scroll wheel to be "horizontal scroll", but even after reading the manual all I can see is that it allows you to bind it to a macro that presses a series of keys which you configure.

Physically, the mouse has a nice weight and decent size (after adjusting it to max length). The thumb pad is very easy to squeeze back inward even after tightening the screw as much as possible. I ended up just tightening the bolt with it in the closest position. The back and forward buttons are awkward, because the forward button is just above your thumb, and the back button is far enough back that you have to lift your thumb and move it backwards to hit the back button. On most mice, your thumb rests between the back and forward buttons, or just under the back button (and this is with the thumb pad moved forward entirely, and the palm rest back as far as possible as well). I was really looking forward to the pinkie plate that extends outward to rest your ring and pinkie fingers on. However the plate doesn't have any grooves to rest your fingers in, and its quite small for my fingers. I ended up putting one of the non pinkie rest plates on it.

I have not had any issues with the sensor as some people have described. I don't lift my mouse that often, but even when I have, I didn't notice any extreme jumping. At rest the cursor doesn't drift as one person described. If some of the issues were addressed with software I could give it a 9/10, but at the moment I would say 7/10.
 
DanishDevil said:
Agreed. I love the direction this mouse is going, but it was just not properly executed.
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It seems to me that a simple sensor change and onboard hardware profiles like the G9x / G500 have would make this nearly the perfect mouse. One or two ergonomic / housing design issues may need to be addressed as well. All too often I see products that are nearly perfect. Its like the design team takes it 90% of the way and then stops. Carry it that extra 10% and you'd have GOLD.
 
Are you guys planning on fixing these issues with the RAT 9? Also, what is the release date looking like? I am planning on buying a mouse this week, but if you are going to fix these issues then I will wait, otherwise I'm getting the g700.

Thanks,
 
The Rat 7 is 74$ at Amazon right now. I actually ordered it and am now returning it. Its too wide for my liking. Just feels unnatural and of course, I am still in love with my G5.
 
I soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wanted to get a rat 7, but after hearing about the issues i went for a Logitech G500. Picked one up for £30 from amazon.
 
It seems like all of the issues with it are ones that should have been easily spotted in QC. Personally the Twin-Eye's issue ( moving down/right when lifted) doesn't really affect me as i don't lift my mouse that much. The moving while clicking was 'fixed' by loosening the thumb-rest. However, the issue that really bothers me, is that randomly the cursor will start drifting off in random directions without the mouse moving. I can't seem to find a reason for it. I plug in my Deathadder and the problem disappears, once the R.A.T. is in the cursor starts drifting. I've tried multiple surfaces but always the same thing.

The customization and the precision aim are great, I was able to make the mouse fit my hand comfortably. I haven't really used the software other than changing DPI profiles, but it has yet to cause problems on my win7 64 bit (no crashing/program not found, etc.)

The mouse is great but, Saitek/Mad catz have some tweaking to do before the mouse is worth its $100 price tag.

EDIT: Unplugging and plugging it back in seems to fix it for 5-10 minutes, then it starts to drift again. it doesn't seem to be happening to many people, so I can't find any way to fix it, or what could be causing it.


Using an Ideazon Fragmat for a mousepad, also tested on plain white printer paper, a smooth glass tabletop, and a wooden keyboard tray.
 
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