Razer Tarantula Keyboard

Observation

  The Razer Tarantula says that it can control anti-ghosting, so what is Anti-Ghosting?

Razer explains it…

When three keys are pressed at the same time on a normal keyboard, “ghosting” may occur, i.e. a key may not register. This “ghosting” is due to the limitations of the keyboard’s internal circuitry. As many modern games require multiple buttons to be pressed, this “ghosting” problem limits the effectiveness of gamers.

With the Razer Tarantula’s anti-ghosting capability, you can press up to a whopping 10 simultaneous buttons without the “ghosting” effect. The Tarantula’s anti-ghosting support is more than any other keyboard out on the market.

  Now this is cool as I have been in that situation and it is no fun.

  Creating profiles for your games or programs at first seems to be a bit tough, but once you get one or two under you belt you will be able to set them up all day. The first 5 profiles are saved within the keyboard itself…what? Yep, the keyboard has 32k on board memory that stores the first five SYNAPSE. This means that you can take you Razer Tarantula, plug it into another PC and be able to use them.

  Only a few selected keys are backlit on the keyboard. All the side option keys (L-R) do light up along with the profile key. I guess this will be taken care of by using the BattleDock BattleLight to shine some light on the keys. The Razer Logo in the center of the wrist support is also illuminated and slowly pulsates. When you complete a profile or change an option the logo will flash 3 times telling you that it stored the changes.

  During a reboot to set some options in the BIOS I found that I was unable to use it to access the BIOS. Luckily I had another keyboard still plugged in and was able to do what I needed. I also checked all the options needed to use a USB keyboard at boot, still no luck. I tested if this might just be a fluke and installed a cheap USB keyboard while in the BIOS and was able to use it. I am not sure if there is something in the BIOS that does not recognize the Tarantula as a keyboard. I have looked around and have seen where others had the same problem; they were able to correct it by changing the settings in the BIOS. My problem of not getting into the BIOS by using the Tarantula seems to be uncommon and might be isolated to my motherboards BIOS. If I get an answer I will post here in the review.

 BattlleDock accessories do sound cool and of the first to options available the BattleLight will probably be a must have as to me the BattleEye (webcam) sounds like over-kill.  This might be good for the WOW crowd or for those type of games that don’t have a lot of action going on and you can have 2 monitors running. I just can’t see any serious gamer wanting to give up any latency or screen space for the chance to see your friend make a stupid face when you smack him down.