Cyborg Stealth Mouse Software

Software and drivers are one area that can greatly impact the user experience for a mouse. The COD Black Ops Stealth Mouse comes with the driver and configuration software on the dog-tag USB drive. The mouse works fine before installation, but only the standard buttons work. Installation is quick and results in two resident processes. ProfilerU.exe eats 8 K of memory and is the process responsible for the profile editor residing in the system tray. SaiMfd.exe uses 5 K of memory and is the actual mouse driver, but even all the features appear to work fine without this process.

The profile editor is straight forward and takes little instruction to get started with basic changes. The Settings tab provides the sliders for optimizing the DPI resolution and precision aim. Four different DPI settings can be stored per profile and are changed using the rocker switch behind the scroll wheel. Although there are three different modes for the rest of the buttons the DPI modes are independent. As a result the four DPI modes are the same for all three button modes. Similarly, the precision aim slider is independent of both the DPI modes and the button modes. As an example, if my precision aim slider is set to 50%, the precision aim will always reduce the active DPI mode by 50% regardless of the DPI mode or button mode. There is only one universal precision aim setting.

The programming tab handles the button configurations and profile management. There are several options when it comes to configuring mouse buttons.

Latched: Causes the button to "latch" or "lock" like the Caps Lock, Scroll Lock or Num Lock. Press once to latch, press once to release. The assigned function (mouse button, keyboard key or macro) will keep repeating while the latch is on.

Unprogrammed: Clears all settings for the button.

Fall Back: This uses the default button assignment or whatever function you assign in the default mode (mode 1).

Button: Assigns one or more keystrokes or clicks in series.

New Key Presses: This opens a button entry dialogue allowing you to record keys and clicks. The time delays between press and release are not saved during the initial recording but can be updated afterwards. Delays for up and down states cannot be set separately.

New Macro: Macros are essentially the same as New Key Presses with one main difference. A New Key Press series will only continue executing while the mouse button is held down. A macro series will continue to execute to completion even after releasing the mouse button. It can be interrupted by pressing another mouse button, but will continue to execute when real keyboard keys are pressed.

New Advanced Command: This option opens the editor shown in the image below. A button series can be assigned for each of three states of the mouse button, Press, Repeat and Release. The Press and Repeat phases can execute either as macros or as "key presses" while the release phase only executes as a macro. Each phase will execute to completion before the next phase begins. In this mode the button timings are recorded, visible, editable, and can be assigned separately for up and down key states. I use this editor exclusively.

Hot Keys and System Keys: All three button series can include system keys and hot keys. The list of hot keys includes media functions, application launches and application controls. The list of applications includes My Computer, internet, media player, e-mail, and calculator. The application controls include forward, back, search, stop, refresh, and bookmarks.

As you create button series they are stored in the profile and added to the popup menu below the "Do Nothing" command. Other keys can be assigned to any command on the list including the "Do Nothing" command. Once a command is not being used by any of the mouse buttons it can be deleted.

Once a profile has been configured it must be saved for future use. Profiles are saved by default to a specific location on the local hard drive, but they can also be saved to the dog-tag USB drive. Profiles in the default location automatically get listed in the system tray for easy activation. A default profile to load on startup can be set from the system tray. Profiles on the USB drive must be manually opened and activated through the profile editor software. The software suite also has the option to download pre-configured profiles for various games, but despite weeks of checking the Saitek webpage is still "being updated". Luckily I browsed the files on the USB drive and found several profiles there. Some examples are "Call of Duty Generic", "Fallout3", "Bad Company2", "L4D2" and several more. Hopefully they'll update the website with newer games.

Overall the software suite provides access to some very convenient scripting for automating tasks. But these advanced features require the driver and software to be installed on the PC, so the settings are not portable. I would like to see more companies move in the direction of on-board memory for saving the mouse settings like we saw on the CM Storm Sentinal and Inferno.

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