The Price

$60 MSRP, $46 retail.

The Verdict

The SideWinder X6 was a marvelous fresh start for Microsoft’s rejuvenated gaming hardware division, designed with a brooding Death Star aesthetic, shit hot jog wheels, and a hot-swappable detachable keyboard that can be hooked up to the left or right side. It’s just $20 pricier MSRP (but retail, $12) than the X6, and I’ll tell you straight up, a better deal.

The SideWinder X4 is virtually identical at the core—same basic keyboard layout (including the too-long spacebar), chaos-red backlighting, and laptop-esque throw distance for the keys—but it ditches the most lovable aspects of the X6: the jog wheels and the detachable keyboard. Instead, it touts anti-ghosting, so you can mash 26 keys at once and have them all register. Also, it’s got fewer macros total (though really, it still has plenty enough). And a smaller wrist rest.

The core features are solid. It held up to the Twister-style keyboard gymnastics you occasionally have to perform in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and the snap of the keys is on point: Crisp and squishy, like a croissant.

But! The fact remains, its older, more capable brother costs a few nickels more and is well worth the extra scratch. So if you can find the X4 for $20 in a bargain bin in a couple months and need a basic gaming, then it’d be a solid buy. In the meantime, if your’e gonna get a gaming keyboard, step up to the X6. (Personally, I’m waiting for the inevitable X10.)

We’re still suckers for the whole brimstone and fire in space aesthetic (for now)
A solid “basics” gaming keyboard, but why go for basics when it comes to gaming gear?
Software for keyboard is kinda eh compared to Logitech, SteelSeries and Razer
Too many features stripped for such a small price reduction

[Microsoft

Bike functionality is available for over 150 American cities at the moment, but it’s safe to assume that, like everything Google does, it will eventually expand to cover most of the planet. [Google Maps via Physorg]

The train would go on from Beijing to Singapore, and also connect to India and Pakistan, opening up the East to non-fliers.

One of the senior consultants on the railway project, and also a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Wang Mengshu, said that they are “aiming for the trains to run almost as fast as aeroplanes,” and that with any luck, the railway should be “completed in a decade.”

In addition to the London to Beijing plan, they’re also hoping to build railways from Beijing to Russia and Germany, connected with the European railway system. A third project that goes south from China, to Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia has already started, with a deal struck between Burma and China that will see the Chinese paying for the Burmese line, with the Chinese able to tap into their lithium reserves—which they can then use in production of batteries. [Telegraph]

Image credit: Occam