Let There Be (Back)Light!

And Valenna saw it was good. Nah, good is an understandment. It's sexy. It's futuristic. Just looking at it makes my swords sharper. It makes me want to play with the lights off.

I... I think I need a moment. ... K, I'm done.

If you didn't read my post about the Belkin Nostromo n52 SpeedPad before, go do it now.

The Nostromo, in my opinion, raises your play to a new level. Yeah, it may just seem like a "keypad", but the ability to create macros, rebind keys for different profiles and its comfortable layout make it indispensable. Playing without one makes me feel like a n00b. I'm lost with it.

Besides looking cooler than anything else on earth, why am I so excited? Belkin joining forces with Razer. Razer is renowned for its mice and keyboards. Combine their style and technological style with Belkin's ultimate gaming accessory and there's no question in my mind that it's worth the $70 price tag and the te, Tournament Edition, label.

Need more reasons?

• On-board memory. Why? Right now you have to store your profile on your system. Now you can take your Nostromo, plug it into your laptop and it will remember all your keys and all your macros.
• It matches my slick LG Widescreen LCD monitor.
• It glows. Yeah, I'm not really going to be looking at it when I use it. But let's face it, gamers love glow. Razer put it in their mice, people install glows inside their cases and under their streetracing cars.
• It's more responsive. While my current Nostromo is quite responsive, there are a few moments when I can feel I don't press the thumb button just right and I have to press it again. From the appearance, the new thumb button is metal with a lower profile which will make it easier to tactilely find and use.
• Look at the backlight. Look a the metal. It looks awesome.
• It appears like it can receive some punishment. I'm on my second Nostromo and I know people who are on their 3rd Nostromo. This is not really an indication as to the quality of the Nostromo. They hold up well, but when you play one for 3-5 hours every day for more than a year, they tend to start showing that wear in responsiveness.

Hopefully, it should have one of the features I've desired the most. A way to macro in the keymap states into my games. Not only does the Nostromo have 15 buttons, the keypad, a mousewheel and a button, but you can change the keymap state between normal, red, green and blue for a completely different set of keybinding for each keymap state. However, right now there's no way I can combine the change in keymap state into a macro so I can also alert the game I'm playing that I've changed my keymap state. In other words, I want to map a key to change the keymap state to red and press another key like "Q" to alert my game that I've entered Stealth. I've managed to get around this in World of Warcraft through in game macros and never changing my keymap states on my Nostromo, but I'd love to be able to use this functionality on the Nostromo n52te.