Drivers
What we got to play with was a very early beta build of the drivers for this mouse, so all the functions I will talk about here were not available at the time but will be available when the mouse ships. One such feature is the macro editor. When you create a macro in-game, it will save to the computer under a quick enumerated name. The glory of the macro editor is that you can not only change the names of your macros for organizational purposes, but you can make them program or game specific, change the timings between actions in the macros, and even add key presses and such to the macro. The editor is fully featured which really enriches the entire macro functionality. DPI switching settings can be altered in the drivers and assigned to the different buttons across the spine of the mouse. The task switch feature that has been in Microsoft’s mouse drivers for ages remains in place and is as cool as ever.

Finally, they’ve added another feature they call the "Quick Turn". Basically, you assign this action to a button and once you are in-game, you hold the assigned button and the right click down while turning precisely 180 degrees. This action calibrates the Quick Turn and now when you press the Quick Turn button you will spin 180 degrees. The same thing can also be done with turns of 90 degrees in magnitude. Most of us will say this feature is useless, but I found it fun to play with - in the time it takes the Quick Turn to spin, I could flick my mouse around about 10 times. Perhaps this feature has improved in the retail drivers, because it clearly needed work during our initial tests.

In part 2 of this review, when we have had the mouse and official drivers in house for a thorough test, we will give screen shots and actually review the features of the drivers.

The features, improvements and innovations don’t stop…
What else could this mouse possibly have to offer? A little black box comes with the mouse and inside are housed a number of accessories. This mouse not only offers an interchangeable weight system, but also an interchangeable feet system. That’s right, this mouse ships with TWO alternate sets of feet for you to try. The Logitech G5 was one of the first mice to incorporate an interchangeable weight system. However, that little tin the weights came in was useless when sitting on your desk, and some probably even lost the container altogether. Microsoft on the other hand decided to leave no part of this package a waste. The lid to this box slides off and at the far end, a groove is cut for your cord to lay in. The lid is then slid back into place over the cord and effectively your extra weights and feet become a cable anchor for your mouse cord.


The weight cartridge fits so seamlessly into the design that the only thing that gives it away is the button on the bottom of the mouse. Push this and the cartridge ejects from the side of the mouse allowing you to make changes until you find just the right amount of weight. Great implementation and large, easy-to-work-with weights make this a great improvement over other systems.

The interchangeable feet have three different surfaces. There are black, gray and white discs ranging from slow to fast, respectively. This allows the gamer to even further customize his experience and have exactly the mouse he wants. Five feet can fit on the bottom of the mouse and five of each style are included. This is a fantastic innovation and is perfect for the gamer market. We are extremely picky when it comes to our peripherals and we each have our own tastes. Microsoft has made it possible for us to get nice, large gaming feet while at the same time allowing us to choose how much resistance we would like.

Until Part 2…
I have to say that my first experience with this mouse in July was extremely positive. Every single person in the office who played with this mouse LOVED their experience with it. When the promised driver features are combined with the physical options on the mouse, the customization is nearly endless. This mouse was designed to be a crowd pleaser and I have no doubt in my mind that it will be. While these are my impressions from New York, I reserve full judgment until I have the final product in my hands for review. This is to ensure that I am able to run it through the gaming gauntlet that only we at FPSLabs can truly bring to you. It will a torturous event for this poor mouse, but based on what I have seen so far, I can’t see any reason it won’t pass with flying colors. Microsoft presents a true champion to herald the return of Sidewinder.

Addendum
A couple things I forgot to touch on:

The shape of the mouse, I can't believe I didn't share this with you guys.   Well, its quite obvious that the shape is very different.  The most obvious part of this radical new design is the peak of the mouse is not in the center like the majority of today's gaming mice, but in the back.  While my first thought was that this was going to be extremely uncomfortable, it actually was and yielded more control over the mouse than the comparison mice I had brought with.  On this trip, I brought the G5, DeathAdder, and IME3.0 to compare the mouse to.  The unique shape was fantastic.  The other guys who tried this mouse and loved it were Jason Coene, Lee Chen, and Trevor "Midway" Schmidt.  All these guys, including myself couldn't get over how something so different and questionable performed so well and was actually better than what we were all used to.  The final test and the true review will be when they send us one of the final product units

I would also like to add that this is, in fact, a laser mouse.  Here are some specs directly from the website:

RESOLUTION: 2000 dpi

IMAGE PROCESSING: 7080 frames per second

MAX ACCELERATION: 20 G

MAX SPEED: 45 inches per second

USB REPORTING: 500 Hz

In Part 2 of this review, we will be testing a number of things as usual with our gaming mice reviews.  As part of this I will ask Microsoft some questions on their laser engine to see what they have done with their proprietary engine to bring it up to gaming grade.  What's more is we can actually see how this laser engine performs once we have it in the lab.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in the next week or so.