This blog post is for all of the mac (Lion) owners who are given (or who buy themselves) a Steelseries Kinzu mouse at Christmas. This writeup may be of use to owners of other gaming mice (with Windows only driver software).
I wanted a mouse for gaming. Being impatient, I headed to the local shops and had a look about. I popped into PC World / Currys but left disappointed with the service [1]. Game were selling a Steelseries Kinzu for a little more than the online price so I picked it up. It’s a seemingly high spec mouse without the cosmetic frills.
Wait, what is a gaming mouse?
For Quake it’s beneficial to have a mouse that polls at 500hz. Secondly, a higher DPI allows for smoother aiming motion. I’m not going to pretend that these are necessary in order to win (I’ll leave that to the people hawking mice), but for a game as high paced and ‘twitchy’ as Quake, I feel like I notice a difference.
But I own a mac!
With a bit of research I came to the conclusion that none of the major companies provided stable drivers or configuration software for OSX. I thought if the rate was set in hardware I might get away with not configuring it.
So, when I returned home with my Steelseries Kinzu, I plugged it in and it felt… suprisingly OK. I had a look at the OSX USB prober, which suggested the mouse was polling at 1000hz. Good news, although I’d read of ‘stability issues’ at that high a rate. When playing Quake, it felt reasonably good, though it would intermittently disconnect and reconnect itself (usually in the middle of a firefight). This wouldn’t do.
I’d also read that a firmware upgrade for the mouse (mice have firmware now? How long was I gone!) resolved a similar issue a user was having on Ubuntu. You need access to a Windows machine that you can install their software on. Through their configuration software you can upgrade your mouse firmware and configure the sampling rate / DPI. These settings are remembered (mice have memory now! How long was I go…) so when you return to your mac, all will be peachy.
But I don’t have a Windows machine
But wait, you have a mac. You don’t have access to a Windows machine. I had to make do with installing the software on a Virtualbox instance (a Windows 7 instance provided by the Internet Explorer for browser testing). Initially the mouse wasn’t accepted as a valid mouse by the software. I shut down the VM and set the USB filter options to cover the Kinzu. When I booted up the VM the mouse wouldn’t move, but running the mouse configuration software again it was detected and installed correctly. Truth be told, I don’t know if the USB filters was the key to getting this working, or whether it just needed a few random reboots to pick up properly. YMMV. Mine certainly did.
So to summarise:
- If you buy a Steelseries Kinzu mouse, don’t expect any useful help from their under-resourced support team
- If you have access to a Windows machine, install the mouse software on that to configure your mouse. I found 500hz rid me of my mouse freezing / disconnecting / reconnecting issue.
- If you don’t have access to a Windows machine, fiddle about with the VM images provided by the Internet Explorer team. It can be done.
Upgrading the firmware on your mouse and lowering the polling rate made this mouse feel spot on.
[1] PC World / Currys Workington were selling ex-display model mice as new with no discount.