The Gear: SideWinder X4 Keyboard – Busting Ghosts!
We are very proud to be able to officially announce the new SideWinder X4 Keyboard! I may or may not have been playing with this thing for months. This is the newest release from the SideWinder Hardware team here at Microsoft and is also the debut of some new tech fresh from the Applied Sciences Group here at MS as well.
I ain’t afraid of no ghosts… Don’t worry it will all make sense shortly! The X4 is our first retail keyboard to feature our new anti-ghosting technology. But what does it all mean??? Well, most keyboards have issues with certain button/key combinations being held down, or issues reading more than a few keys at a time being pressed. The X4 keyboard can read and recognize up to 26 individual keys being pressed at the same time! If you need more than that, you have way too many fingers…
Another great feature of the X4 is the ability to set repeating Macros. So once you get your Macro setup up, you can now set it to repeat as needed. Here is the initial feature list taken directly from our Hardware site:
Press up to 26 keys simultaneously without ghosting—what you press is what you get!
Manually toggle the keyboard from standard mode to either of two gaming modes. LEDs show the selected mode.
When a game or application profile is assigned using the software, the keyboard detects the game or application you are running and applies your custom profile to the application.
Switch among three banks of six programmable macro keys to assign up to 18 macros per profile.
Record any sequence of keystrokes—even standard chat messages. Macros are stored on your hard drive and can be easily shared.
Set your macros to repeat.
Adjust key-legend backlighting with three illumination levels plus “off.”
Play/Pause, Previous Track, Next Track, and Mute.
I will have more info as well as some real world gameplay and an unboxing video today… yes, I have one of these beauties in my hands… I think it loves me…
For now, here is a picture of the packaging, and links to the official announcement info:
SideWinder 24x7
Tainen