[jrockway]

This seems to be how the world of Windows works. Every peripheral I have seems to need an account to save your settings in the cloud, a feature I pretty much never care about. Every vendor wants you to know that yes, you're using their thing, and that they employ an entire team of engineers and designers that have never seen a computer before. I wish someone would put a stop to it.

[Slackwise]

This is why I had reservations about many high end mechanical keyboards that had all their macro/lighting/etc support done via software. Found out that Ducky makes keyboards that are 100% hardware configured, no OS even needed, just power. (Also IKBC keyboards do configuration via firmware too, I believe.)

As for my mouse, I had to use some Corsair junk to configure the button mappings, sensitivity, and turn down their ridiculous LED, but then it saved the settings to the mouse firmware so I can uninstall it and use it just fine on Linux. No more touching it again. Still not happy about it. Would rather it had been some tiny DIP switches underneath.

[jrockway]

Yeah, I got on board the mechanical keyboard train before it was cool, and as a result my keyboard has no software that can configure it. There's a DIP switch to make caps lock into control. Perfect.

I have a Corsair mouse, and their software is spectacularly awful. (Their other software is also terrible; like configuring fan speed profiles for the water cooler.) No account required, but the button configuration is horrendously complex and in the end completely useless. I never figured out how to make a mouse button show up to Windows as an extra mouse button. Switched to a DeathAdder, and while their software is also terrible, at least the extra mouse buttons show up to the OS as mouse buttons. (Razer's software is terrible in a different way; the UI is overdesigned and I don't want to type in a username and secure password to change my fucking mouse settings... but once you're in there, the software does actually work well, letting you configure what you want in a relatively straightforward manner.)

All in all, this stuff is all super gimmicky. I want the marketing people to know I bought their product _in spite_ of the software they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing. I would be happier without it. The company would be more profitable without it. The mouse is for pointing at enemies and clicking when their head is under the crosshairs. I don't need a "brand experience". I don't need fancy colors or "game optimization". Just translate my hand motion to input events. I'll do the rest. Thanks.

[bjelkeman-again]

I suspect the marketing department got too much say in this part of what they are offering. The drivers seem to be ok otherwise (I use a Naga Hex mouse and a Nostromo one hand keyboard).