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Ah, gamers, we're an odd bunch. We spend all this money on the best hardware so we can play all the latest games with their amazing eye-candy. But when it comes to actually competing against each other online we turn all the graphical effects off so we can squeeze every last FPS out of our machines to try and gain a competitive advantage. It's enough to make you wonder why you bother. Just buy three year old hardware at bargain basement prices and use that for running your competitive games. That is, unless you're talking mice.

Of all things, a decent gaming mouse is one investment that you will always see the advantage of. No matter whether your fragging away to your heart's content or just doing a spot of word processing, having a mouse that never lets you down will make your time in front of a computer so much more enjoyable.

Of course, you may be well aware of this and have already invested in a decent quality mouse. But, just as with every other area of IT, mice are continually improving so it's always worth considering an upgrade and, at around £50, a new mouse could be the perfect way to spend that Christmas money from your grandma.

Now, Andy looked at the Logitech G9 a few weeks ago and both he and I agreed it was a superb device that was accurate, comfortable, and incredibly diverse. Personally, I felt it had a few too many gimmicks tacked on for me to wholeheartedly recommend it as a purchase, but for sheer comfort and tracking ability I liked it so much, I adopted it as my mouse of choice at work. That was, until the Steel Series Ikari arrived.

Designed in co-operation with a number of professional gaming teams, the Ikari is the latest in a long line of gaming peripherals designed by Steel Series, the Denmark based manufacturer of all things gaming. And, just as with the Siberia neckband headset I looked at a couple of weeks ago, the Ikari is aimed specifically at gamers and has such features as programmable macros, fully customisable CPI switching, and an LCD display.

In contrast to the Logitech's scattergun approach to designing the G9, Steel Series has used its unique knowledge of the competitive gaming market to design a very focussed product that does everything it needs to with abosolute perfection but doesn't include any of the extraneous stuff. Indeed, you only have to look at some of the stuff that Steel Series has chosen to omit to know this is a serious professional bit of kit.

For instance, where the latest thing in mouse design is to have an adjustable weight system that supposedly enables you to change the inertial feel of your mouse to match your playing style, Steel Series asked a group of pro-gamers how heavy they like their mice and all of them said as light as possible. So, Steel Series simply omitted a weights system altogether.

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