It came to the point that I made the decision to get a wireless headset to get rid of the cable problems once and for all. I knew that wireless headsets with microphone were expensive, and that I had to pay more than double compared to a wired headset.

After reviewing several wireless headsets over the past weeks I decided to order the Logitech G930 Wireless PC gaming headset. The headset seemed to have driver problems in the beginning, but recent reviews on sites like Amazon showed that Logitech managed to resolve those issues.

The wireless headset is delivered in a big box. It contains the headset, a wireless adapter dock, the wireless adapter, manuals and a CD with the latest drivers.

Installation is a breeze. You need to start with the software from CD before you plug in the headset in the computer. Plug-in? Yes, the headset needs to be charged. While it comes with a certain amount of juice, it is not fully charged. Please note that the headset will work without the driver but you won’t be able to use some of its features, surround sound for instance.

How does the charging work? You connect the wireless dock to the PC. This is done via a standard USB cable. You then plug the wireless adapter into the dock and connect the mini USB connector to the headset. The headset indicates the charging status with a LED. Steady green means it is fully charged and ready for use. You can use it before but will have less time doing so.

You find lots of controls on the headset. It comes with volume control for instance which is very handy when playing games or listening to music, especially if you are not at your PC at the time. The volume control and the mic mute button have been put directly on the left ear cup where they can be easily reached. The microphone is automatically muted if you move it to its up position. It features an LED at its tip that indicates if it is muted or not. You find a switch to enable or disable surround sound there as well. Surround sound only works if the Logitech drivers are installed.

Three macro buttons are located on the left ear cup as well. These can be programmed in the Logitech G930 software. Some standard features, like playing and pausing, skipping forward and back, voice morphing or push to talk are already available as presets.

The software can be used to configure the three G keys. Profiles are available for programs like iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player or applications of the user’s choice. The system is plugin driven which means that you can download and install plugins to add support for additional programs or applications.

The software offers various controls, volume, microphone and bass for instance which you can modify to suite your taste. Experienced users can fine tune the sound further with a click on the advanced equalizer button.

The voice morphing capabilities are not really impressive, and probably not needed by most users. While it may be fun to talk like a robot or an alien once or twice, it is nothing that most people would want to do on a regular basis, especially if the voice morphing quality is put into consideration. Hint, it is weak.

The headband can be adjusted to fit comfortable. The noise isolation ear cups are large and enclose (most) ears fully. The headset itself is not heavy at all and very comfortable to use, even for hours. The noise cancelling microphone is bendable even though it does not look that way on first glance. You can bend it to find the optimal speaking position.

Logitech claims that the headset has a reach of about 12 meters. While I was not able to test that, I can confirm that the headset works everywhere in my apartment. Quality remains the same regardless of distance to the PC.

Another claim is that the battery power lasts up to 10 hours. It is safe to say that this is more of an upper limit. A more realistic figure is six or seven hours. That’s not a big problem though as you can plug the wireless headset right into the docking station to continue working with the headset, provided that you are at your PC and not somewhere else in your apartment or office.

Some users, especially users running Windows 7 64-bit have reported a cracking noise when playing music. I experienced the same issue at the beginning, but was able to resolve it by disabling all other sound playback and recording devices under the Sound Control Panel.

The price tag is heavy, even for a wireless gaming headset. It will set you back roughly 90 Dollars and 140 Euros (that’s twice the Dollar price), lots of money which you could easily invest into two high quality wired headsets. Still, a wireless headset is way more comfortable to use. Imagine calling someone on your PC. With a wired headset you need to stay near the PC, with a wireless headset you can walk around, grab a coffee or look for something in your office that you need during the call.

Would I buy the headset again? Yes I would, provided that it won’t break or stop working in a month or two. Amazon.com is currently selling the wireless headset for less than $100. Considering that I paid almost twice the amount, I’d say that this is a bargain:

Let me know if you have questions. I try my best to answer them.

Let’s start with why you might want to buy an illuminated keyboard.  It’s clear that a great deal of design effort has gone into these products, indeed Logitech has been putting much more effort into design generally.  I’ve recently bought a few of their products including the DiNovo Keyboard for netbooks for which the palm-wrest is a single piece of brushed aluminium and their HD Pro Webcam which shoots 1080p video with their ClearChat Wireless Headphones (and I’ll be reviewing these last two items soon).

Illuminated keyboards can be a real boon however, especially for the living room when people are winding down for the evening with the TV on and the lights are dimmed.  It makes everything much easier to use and I can tell you straight away that in this type of environment you will notice the benefits of an illuminated keyboard straight away.  But let’s have a look at these two particular high-end products.

Logitech Illuminated Keyboard

The Logitech Illuminated Ultrathin Keyboard with Backlighting is most definitely the more striking of the two.  I wasn’t too keen on the over-styled font used on the keys but there can be no doubt that this keyboard is extraordinarily pretty and exactly the sort of keyboard that will help make an all-in-one PC look stunning.

The action is smooth and quiet and there’s plenty on offer including media playback controls on a function key combination and dedicated controls for volume and a key to launch the ever-important calculator.

The keyboard is surrounded by a piece of clear plastic that sadly doesn’t also light up but that looks gorgeous.  The lighting itself has three brightness settings and can also be switched off when you don’t want it.  It’s not intrusive, even when sitting in the dark, but there’s bleed around the keys too instead of just through the middle.

In fairness this is a problem that’s common with illuminated keyboards and the wireless one suffers from the same problem, though not as badly.

One difference between the two keyboards is that the wired keyboard has a double height Del key and shuffles the Insertkey, which almost nobody uses any more, off to the top row of small function keys.  I found this makes a big difference as you might be surprised how often this key gets used.

Logitech Wireless Illuminated Keyboard

The Logitech wireless illuminated keyboard is a very different proposition.  It’s all curvy with big, bold letters on the keys in an almost comic sans font.  It’s clear here that Logitech have gone for comfort rather than looks and each key is slightly curved as as to make typing for long periods more comfortable.  This extends to the write-wrest too which is also curved.
The keyboard has a similar clear plastic strip around the outside, again not illuminated that adds to the chic appeal of the device, a helpful on-off switch and a very useful battery indicator.

You plug this keyboard in via the supplied Micro-USB cable and I found leaving it plugged in all the time except for when I wanted to use that cable to top up the charge on my phone.  It’s useful to be able to use it wired or wireless.

But how does power consumption work?  Logitech have tried to minimise the draining effect of the backlight by including a motion sensor into the keyboard that only turns it on when you’re near the device (it also comes on when you’re typing).  This motion sensor is in the top right of the device though near the battery life indicator and, I don’t know about you, but I don’t put my hand up[ there very often.  Putting the sensor in the wrist-rest would have been far more sensible I think.

Speaking of sensors, the wireless receiver is tiny and there’s no pairing involved, it just works all the time.  This is essential as I remember how hard it was to pair keyboard from even a few short years ago.  The backlight again has three brightness settings.

Conclusions

So which one do I think is best and are they worth the price premium you’ll pay for them?  If you tend to have lots of drinks around then you should probably look elsewhere as these keyboards are definitely not spill-proof, but they’re definitely worth it if you want to make a design statement with your PC, or if it sits in a prominent position in your home.

For style then the wired keyboard wins hands down, if you’ll excuse the pun, but if you need to type for extended periods then the wireless keyboard is the on you should go with for the extra comfort.  This keyboard is also excellent for people with vision problems as the letters and symbols on the keys are very clear and much larger than on your average keyboard.

If I had to pick a winner then the wirelss keyboard pips it, though both are excellent, very quiet and have great build quality.  Recommended.

What is it?

GUVCView is a GTK+ front-end for the capturing of video from devices supported by the UVC driver. GUVCView was based on the luvcview project created by the QuickCamTeam. With GUVCView you can capture video or images along with audio. You can also control the look of your captured images/videos with easy to use sliders and check boxes. There is no need to be a video or audio expert to get high-quality video with GUVCView.

Installation

Installation is simple. I will demonstrate in Ubuntu 10.10. To install this tool do the following:

1. Open up the Ubuntu Software Center.
2. Search for guvcview.
3. Click the Install button associated with GUVCView.
4. Type your sudo password.
5. Accept any dependencies (if applicable).

Let the installation complete. Once the installation is finished, you will find GUVCView in the Applications > Sound & Video menu.

Usage

Figure 1

The basic usage of GUVCView is simple. When opened you will see two different windows. Figure 1 shows me pointing out the two different windows used by GUVCView. The left window is the preview window that will show a real-time viewer as you record your video (or take your picture). The right window is where you control the video and set up the options for the recording.

If you notice your camera is not auto-detected, you will want to go to the Video & Files tab and then see if your device is listed in the Device tab. If it is, but is not selected, go ahead and select it. If it is not listed, the camera might not be supported (or the drivers installed). Typically speaking, if your camera is supported in Cheese, it will be supported in GUVCView.

In this same tab you can select various options for your video recording. One very important option is the resolution. Remember, the higher the resolution the better the quality but the larger the file size.

Do the same for audio in the Audio tab. You might have to select a different Input device (depending upon the camera you have).

Once you have all of your options set up you are ready to record. To do this just make sure you are within the frame of the camera lense and hit the Cap. Video button in the control window. As soon as you click the Cap. Video button, you are recording. When you click the Cap. Video button it will change to Stop Video. To stop recording click th Stop Video button and the file will automatically be saved.

Final thoughts

GUVCView, from my perspective, is a much better means of recording video than Cheese. This especially applies if the video you are recording is to be used for something other than, say, Skype chatting.

While it is logical that the left-click or right-click button function should not be changed it is less logical why the other buttons cannot be configured freely. The program Uberoptions enables all options on all buttons in Setpoint, even the left and right mouse button can be changed if the option is selected during installation. Be warned that you could make changes that would leave your system without a left-click and right-click option.

Uberoptions overwrites some files of Logitech Setpoint to offer those additional configuration options which become active after the next start of the Logitech Setpoint software.

The options for every mouse button is highly configurable after installing Uberoptions. It’s possible to open files, applications, websites, Windows commands, menus and probably another 100 or so options. The application is compatible to Autohotkeys which leaves room for more complex operations.

Eight functions are offered in total, it is possible to set the double right-click to lock, shutdown or log off the computer, to minimize the active window or all windows, to close the active window or all windows and to mute the sound.

The major problem that I have with this application is that a (double) right-click always opens the right-click menu as well. I tried configuring the double right-click to minimize all windows and the reaction time was not great. First the right-click window opened, then nothing happened for some time and after a few seconds all windows where minimized.

It’s probably better to configure the additional mouse buttons if your mouse has any instead of trying to add a function to the double right-click. My Logitech mouse is already a bit older but it has so many buttons that I sometimes press one accidentally.