Prologue

Sergeant first class Danny stood in front of his commander's huge aquarium, holding a tiny bottle with red liquid in his right hand and intensively scratching his forehead with the left hand. Don't let the rank nor the fact that Danny was two months away from the end of his military service fool you, as he was still a soldier and thought of how to screw the system.

His conflict was that he had to replace the aquarium's water once a week and put in three drops of the red liquid when doing it. "If I have two months to go, and I have to put three drops once a week, maybe I can pour 24 drops now and get it over with!".

Thrilled with the bright idea, Danny opened the aquarium and started dripping, but after the first 10 drops he lost his nerves and poured the rest of the bottle in. the consequences were quick to come, and soon all his commander's Coy fishes were floating dead on their backs. It is unnecessary to say that despite Danny was never caught; his last two months of service were a nightmare each soldier can easily imagine…

Now ask me why do I tell it to you and what does it have to do with the Nostromo n52 review. Well, after receiving this artifact I was informed by Admin that once the review is done I am to pass it on to the noobs from the community channel tech news. At this moment I felt as if I'm leaving my fishes at the hands of S.F.C Danny.

Package contents

Once I got the package, without even opening it, I knew I had something good in my hands, or at least something that looks real high quality. The package outer design is real attractive, but has no mistake –it's the product itself you see and buy.

Inside the package the Nostromo SpeedPad n52 - which is a pad combining keyboard, mouse and joystick - waited. The package also contained a manual in English, German, Dutch, Spanish, French and Italian and an installment disc.

Product's info

The Nostromo n52 is connecting to the computer via a USB cable, and also has three colorful monitoring miniature light bulbs. The pad is as ergonomic as it can be: it's stable on the table, fits the hand structure and enables effortless work and containing the following items:

For the four fingers, from the index finger to the little finger:

14 keyboard keys.

Push-button mouse wheel.

For the thumb:

Keys joystick

Space button

A cool red button reminding a rocket launching trigger.

I think it's real cool I'll finally be able to use five fingers while playing, instead of just pressing the space key, the thumb now has 10 buttons (8 joystick directions).

The product itself is supported in windows versions 98 or better as well as in MAC systems. For Windows Vista users there are drivers available only for the 32 bit version, but they clarified that "they are working on it to have drivers available for the 64bit".

System requirements

USB entrance

CD –ROM or DVD drive

Windows 98 or better, Mac OS 9.04 or Mac OS x

233 MHz Pentium processor

30 MB hard disc space (Mac OS 9.04 users only need 10 MB while Mac OS X need a clear 102 MB)

Installment

I'll split this paragraph in two. Since most of the users prefer the plug and play option, that requires no more than just inserting the USB line in place and letting windows do all the installing he likes (what took him 3 seconds)  and than you can play as much as you'd like using the Nostromo's default keys, which is not a bad option.

On the other hand, the serious gamer option will be manually installing the device with the install disc prior to plugging it in, what will allow you to program the device as you wish. What will lead you to the Control Panel.

In both cases, the installment was so easy even a five year old could do it. As to updating drivers, you are always welcome to check out for newer drivers at Belkin's site

Control panel

The control panel allows you to create a certain profile for each game you play, what means you can sort the keys as you desire. The keys programming is real easy: all you have to do is choosing a button and recording the desired key, which can be a single key, a mouse press or, pay close attention, a macro action – what means you can record whatever keys combo you'd like and activating it with a single button pressing. This is a bit cheating, especially when it comes to games such as Tekken or NBA where all the point is being skilled enough to make a certain combo.

The control panel is a little window showing you all the Nostromo devices connected to your computer. You don't know which is which? No problemo! A small press on one of the keys will illuminate the chosen device and whoever has ready profiles can easily load the profile and start playing.

Since the n52 is a new version, you will most likely have problems finding ready profiles on the net, what will force you to make your own profiles – which is preferable from my point of view. In the bottom of the window you'll find the Launch Editor that opens the control panel that enables you to personalize your keys. The panel is very easy to use and all actions done when creating a profile are reversible.

The control panel allows you to also create three layers of shift buttons: red, blue and green. What means you can program three times more keys that you originally expected and with no chance you'll be missing action keys in some game. Now, I don't want to sound shallow, but I can suffice with 14 keyboard keys and 10 thumb keys for every game I play and messing up with layers is  something that fits women who likes to bake cakes other than playing games. I'll still applause the producers who thought of the idea that triples the amount of keys. I know it might come in handy for some games, such as Neverwinter Nights, but it isn't my line of games.

Gaming

Here is where I really doing my best for you, cause I could basically play a game or two and tell you if it was great or not, but I simply had so much fun playing the Nostromo I played almost every game I had in my reach.

Wolfenstein ET
Since we're NGO reviewers this was the first game tested, this and because it's an openGL game where one can change the keys from within the game itself.

I first played the noob and really played the game without installing the drivers and instead I used the game's inner Manu to change the keys definitions. The results were amazing, and if I was eating noobs for breakfast in ET I now broke every record I had – what made me suspicious that something in the Nostromo is making me play better.

Than I used the hardware drivers to create a game profile and even though it took a while to get used to the fact that the keys moved away, the results were incredible: I reached a killing spree and performance that stunned me. What I do recommend warmly is putting the keyboard away while playing because when pressure rises you have this tendency to search for the good old keys.

ScarFace
Here it is impassible to play without creating a profile, mainly because the game doesn't allow you to change keys. When I think about it, Nostromo is maybe the best thing that happened to ScarFace whose crappy interface uses the farthest keys available.

Here I'd want to share you a personal experience: if you don't know, the shortest ScarFace game is 3 hours playing, and after half an hour the hand starts to hurt me. All the car games where you have to press hard on the gas give me this pain. Well, this time, after four hour of straight game I figured out that my hand doesn't hurt a bit! Quite an occasion I didn't know if the Nostromo is the one to win the reward for, or maybe the holyday vacation.

Test Drive Unlimited
Yes, I know I didn't got this review out yet, but I had to check the assumption regarding the driving games. After two hours of playing and not a single arm pain I can happily say that the Nostromo's ergonomic structure is saving my wrist every time I play games whose main action is pressing the W button. After eating lunch I figured out something else – the keyboard is no longer comfortable to me. Once I'll have to give it away I'll be in big troubles. I simply got so used to it that I can no longer understand how can people play with the keyboard anymore.

Battlefield 2142
I didn't have to add this one up too, but I wanted to play another shooter to understand why the results are so much better than before and figured out that it's because I don't have to raise the hand to switch weapons or so. For example: in order to draw a grenade in battlefield I had to press the 7 button, and could lose the positioning of my fingers on the way back, pressing the Caps Lock popping up the map that takes hours to open or close, what can result in quite and fight-less death. Now when my fingers are stationary no such a mishap might occur and my states are rising…

Collision with other hardware

My computer has a wireless mouse and keyboard connected to it, plus on regular wire mouse, a real experiments lab. The hardware didn't collide with any of the mousse nor with the keyboard. The computer could easily differ between the incoming signals and no odd behavior was spotted.

CPU usage

I turned off all applications and activated the control panel, Editor and the application manager. The software is found to consume some three to eight MB RAM, according the number of opened windows, or in other words – the computer doesn't even feel it, and no harm should come to its processing abilities.

Final conclusions

As to the question whether the Nostromo n52 is a challenge to the ordinary keyboard, the answer is defiantly yes! It's a combined device with incredible qualities I'm finding hard to describe. I was impressed by the ease of the use of it and its high finish. So much, that if the Admin won't give it back once the  TV noobs are done with it, I'm done with reviews until such a device will be provided, no matter of how much it costs.

If we're speaking of prices, than you should probably know the Nostromo n52 costs 40$ at Belkin's site.

It might sound high for "just a keyboard" (not to mention the delivery) but the fact that now, after using the Nostromo for a week I can hardly understand how I played up till now says it all, not to mention the wrist pains gone. If I had to but my son (to come) a gift and the options were a game or the Nostromo, I'd pick the Nostromo for the following advantages:

Advantages

A quality device that keeps the hands healthy.

It's cheaper than most computer games (who said I'm skinflint?!?)

It empowers the gaming experience

The Nostromo will be used longer then any game and can serve every game.

It looks real cool on the table (me? Shallow?)

Disadvantages

Availability in several regions.

Reviewed by Falcon
Translated & Edited by Roy E.