Taipan Ambidextrous Gaming Mouse

First, I'm not sure why there as so many complaints about the size of this mouse. It may have a hair lower profile than my faithful Razer Diamondback, which, upon its demise, I bought this mouse to replace, but that's all, and the width, so far as I can tell putting my hand on them side-by-side, is the same. Also, I have to admit I like a 'symmetrical' mouse; I guess twenty-plus years of using them makes a right-hand oriented mouse feel a little strange. The Taipan does feel a tad lighter than my Diamondback, but I suspect my real problem is that in the interim between getting this mouse I had to use my Magic Mouse, which is ungodly heavy, and a mouse that had weights I could add to customize it, a feature I really liked. I do wish this mouse had that feature, but, for reasons I'll provide (see the Steam section of this review), I couldn't keep that one, and I really don't like wireless mice (the batteries of which give them more heft) for gaming, even the relatively low-key gaming I do. As far as precision goes, the Taipan has all the same accuracy that made me love my old Diamondback. Supposedly it has more, but to be honest, that's all I can really attest to. I like that level of accuracy for every task—even word processing—so that was a must. The Synapse software worked fine on my mac running OsX 10.8.5. I don't know yet if the customizing feature that switches the mouse's functions as I switch the app I'm using works yet, but so far Synapse hass given me the small tweaks I like, such as letting me 'activate' items in Starbound with my mouse instead of the keyboard. The buttons themselves are better positioned than the Diamondback's and, truly, than the mouse I replaced (see below). There are only two of them (the buttons on the other side of the mouse simply duplicate those on the right for southpaws, since this is an ambidextrous mouse), but that's all I really need. Both they, the main two buttons, and the wheel all have that special hair-trigger-yet resistant feel that Razer does so well: you know you've clicked, but at the same time minimal effort is required for the click. I guess this is silly, but I do miss the lighting on my Diamondback; even if my Mac was asleep, it let me know it was on at a glance. The Taipan has a lighted scroll wheel and logo, but the Diamondback's whole body lit up, while the Taipan's logo not only is smaller, but flashes. Still, I know some people don't like lighting at all, and Synapse has them covered; you can turn either or both lights off if you like. I wish you could set the logo to ON instead of 'Flashing,' but that's a very minor point. All in all, this is a very good replacement: in fact, except for the materials, (which is a good thing: this mouse feels very nice under your hand—just 'tacky' enough to stay with your fingers, but not so much it's going to feel bad if your hand starts sweating, which it will, even if you tend to use 'claw' style the way I do), I don't really know I've changed mice. If you, like me, are a Mac Diamondback owner who finally needs a replacement, I’d say the Taipan is your Huckleberry. (What follows is a long explanation about Steam for Mac; it you don't have a mac, you're probably done reading). The software is important in another way; in fact, it's the main reason I replaced the cheaper mouse I'd bought with this mouse. Although that other brand worked fine on my mac with Steermouse (almost any mouse will), it had one problem: with no driver of its own, the mouse caused Steam to flip its lid. This is something most Mac gamers may not be aware of and need to be: although your mac can live with nearly any mouse, Steam goes crazy if it cannot find a driver for a gaming mouse (this seemingly doesn't apply to cheap mice; apparently something about either high resolution or multiple buttons is what sets Steam off) that 'says' it's the driver for that device (this doesn't apply to control pads, for some reason: go figure). It will work, but first Steam sits there hogging CPU time as it frantically scans your system for the non-existent driver, which it does this for about thirty minutes, even messing with Activity Monitor when you try to force Steam to quit. I don't advice that, by the way; force-quitting seems to mess with the OS itself, something I've rarely encountered since 10.6. It's kind of unbelievable that Steam has let this problem go, but I'm not the first to report it, and for two years no fix has appeared. Using a 'foreign' gaming mouse (I won’t say 'off,' since it was a very nice mouse, one I liked as well or maybe a tad better than the Taipan) also makes any games you load through Steam go through a similar, if shorter, freak-out. All in all, it took me forty minutes to get a game to load with Steam while the 'foreign' mouse was plugged into my Mac. And if you launch Steam and then plug in the mouse, it crashes. So, until Steam fixes this bug, which, from what I can find, it hasn't done for the past two years, I'm pretty much stuck with mice that have their own drivers. Of those, Razer is, to me, makes the best gaming mice by far, and whatever else I can say about Synapse, it not only does provide what I need to keep Steam happy, but it actually makes the mouse perform as advertised, something other brands that provide drivers have so far failed to deliver. Actually, I have to say that so far I'm very pleased with how easy it is to use and access: Synapse sits in the menubar instead of requiring me to go through Systems Preferences to change settings, meaning I don't have to wait for that to load, then get into the actual control panel, and so on (yes, there can be an 'and so on' with some 3rd party panels). Razer seems to have done a very good job with this driver. If it actually shifts functions from app to app, it will really be worth the price difference and maybe then some. Even without, given at how many Mac games, in particular, are turning to Steam, it's still going to be worth it.