Plantronics Voyager Pro - Freedom and Peace & Quiet

So I've been using a Logitech Desktop Microphone for some time now every since my son was born. This replaced my very chunky headphones that blocked out alot of noise. While I really liked them I cant afford to miss him waking up or if my wife needs me.

I've been thinking of getting a wireless headset for sometime now and I finally started investigating this. I also was keen to find something that would cancel out surrounding noise - as much as I have gotten used to the Lion King on repeat and going to bed dreaming of Hakuna Matata - my Guild Mates might not necessarily enjoy this as well.

So after looking at the Jawbone Prime Bluetooth Headset which I saw a blue poster talk about on the WoW Forums - I found a CNET Review. They commented that they still preferred the Plantronics Voyager Pro over any other bluetooth headset out there so I checked out the video review.

I was pretty impressed by what I saw so I ordered one from AusPCMarket. It arrived today and I charged it and hooked it up to my mobile phone. I called my wife and one of the first things she asked me was where I was because it was so quiet. I told her the headset had come and she was very impressed - alot of my work colleges where talking loudly and the general buzz of the office floor is usually quite loud and she couldn't hear any of it.

So I walked down the street - and I work on a major road - usually she wouldn't be able to hear anything but loud trucks going by or trams. She once again couldn't hear a thing but my voice. I was coming through nice and clear and I could also hear her very well.

I'm looking forward to going home tonight and giving it a try with Ventrilo - but so far it charged by micro-USB (note this is slightly smaller than mini-usb which is whatt 2.5" portable hard disks use) and it comes with a power adapter and a bunch of different ear pieces. The buttons and call answering are all easy to use and so far I'm very happy with it!

I'll be sure to update my post if I have any issues with my PC using it.

Changing from Keyclone to Innerspace

So after 3 missed Wintergrasps due to Keyclone simple forgetting to pass keys to my slaves I was fed up. I've loved this software for a long time - but for one reason or the other I need more out of it now. I find the PiP sluggish, its bugging out on me alot more than it ever did and it feels like updates are months and months apart.

After seeing people rave about Innerspace on the forums I decided to look into it again. I had already had a play previously but back then it was quite difficult to setup although very powerful.

I now have multiple teams setup that I can select with ease. It does everything KC did and much more. My PiP swapping is instant, setting up macros for new spells or ideas I have is incredible easy thanks to the in-game addon that pushes macros out to your characters. The GUI interface was very confusing at first but after a lot of playing I feel that I have gotten the hang of it and implementing or fixing issues I had took less and less time.

I've moved away from focus target and switched to a FTL setup. I have to say its incredible. I can play any of my characters solo or in a team. I can slot in and out different team members and my macros all build correctly and cope.

I have also built up a 'general' group of macros and binds that any team can use. Class Specific or Role Specific macros I've put into another group. This means I can say build a new team of 5 warlocks and my group setup, my big button macro, spread out, follow, assist and dps macros all work from the get go - no other setup required except for Jamba. :)

So to put my new solution to use after a day of fiddling and experimenting I decided to run Normal ToC. I've had little success with this before and this time I destroyed it. I still lost a few shamans, my DPS is simple not high enough and I'm not really stopping to heal much at all so I'm attempting to brute force my way through with 4 DPS and a tank - and its working well enough.

I'm now farming ToC reguarly for Abyss Crystals to build up a supply of enchanting materials and hoping to get a few nice upgrades in terms of PvE gear on my Shaman.

A new server and a new faction

So after having alot of my friends decide to try out Aion or simple just take a break from World Of Warcraft it was pretty clear that things where no longer going to work out all that well on the server I was on. After finding out who was still interested in playing and who was moving on, I decided it was time to find a new home.

After a bit of research on the WoW Realm Forums and some discussion in the multi-boxing community over at d-b I decided that the Guild Southern Armada and the server Caelestraez would be a good fit. The guild seemed very casual and relaxed and consisted of mature gamers. They still did 10 man and 25 man raiding but there was no pressure and after having a chat with a few people it definetly seemed like the right fit for me.

Two other boxers where also on the server - Ooga and Astrid/Simulacra. This was a huge bonus as well as playing with other boxers is always great fun, especially in PvP.

So a large amount of money later and I am now Slatters the Blood Elf Paladin, and Slatza - d Orc Shamans. I must say I have really missed horde and have loved revisting the capital citieis and the atmosphere that is the Horde faction.

To top it all off, my Nvidia GTX 280 started having pink screens upon booting which gradually got worse and worse. I ended up grabbing a Powercolor ATI Radeon 5870 which is a very impressive card and I have noticed a very large performance increase over the 280.

I steered clear of the 295 simple because its a dual-gpu solution on one card and this doesn't really give any performance boost in WoW.