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Microsoft Sidewinder Gamevoice: 2 for $50 (buy one get one free by mail)

B

BullishDad

Member
I was looking for a good microphone and came across the Microsoft Sidewinder Gamevoice. This unit includes a high quality Plantronics headset with built in boom mic. For gamers, you can use it to talk to other gamers on the internet for multiplayer games. I haven't used that feature, so I can't comment on how good it is.

The deal is that specially marked boxes have a form on the box which you can fill out and send to Microsoft for a free unit. The normal $50 price isn't bad for all of the features you get. At two for $50, it's a bargain. I'm hoping to use the voice over the internet feature as an alternative to long distance phone calls and for speech recognition in Office XP.

Unfortunately, this was somewhat hard to find at the usual places for electronics and Microsoft products. The other catch is that you want to make sure the form is on the box. I purchased at Compusa at a physical store. The good news is that I received the free unit today (same retail box, but no rebate sticker) after only about a two week wait. Fast service from Microsoft - nice.

Link to Compusa. Best used to see if local store has stock. Linky
 
Buy.com has this for $39.95 and a link to the "rebate" printout for a free one!

They also have free shipping on orders over $99.
 
I highly recommend one of these. I use it with a bunch of my friends who have it for online gaming and it works very well. Above a normal headset mic, the base unit (which works via usb) is a great convenience. You have the mute button as well as a switch to swap between headphones and speakers without connecting/disconnecting anything. And the software works very well if you set up a Gamevoice server all your friends can connect to you and depending on your bandwidth you can have many people on while doing other things.
 
YMMV. I have a HPNA 2.0 network at home and hooked up two of these, one upstairs, one downstairs, to communicate with the kids during Quake 3 deathmatches (the family that frags together...). The voice lag was awful and the software consistently had a hard time handshaking the two units. I happily returned mine to Staples.
 


<< YMMV. I have a HPNA 2.0 network at home and hooked up two of these, one upstairs, one downstairs, to communicate with the kids during Quake 3 deathmatches (the family that frags together...). The voice lag was awful and the software consistently had a hard time handshaking the two units. I happily returned mine to Staples. >>



You must have either had two different compression settings or had your PC's both set to highest quality. Highest quality is for use with chat only. You need to use one of the higher compression settings (I think Delta works the best) for chat with gameplay. These really do work great. The software is actually Shadowfactor's Battlefield Commander software. Microsoft bought it for this package. The ability to select groups and soforth make this an invaluable tool for multiplayer games (we were unbeatable in Tribes 2 when everyone had one of these set up 🙂 ). Anyway...should have read the directions before you returned it.
 

I have the gamevoice and personally don't like it.

What you are actualy buying in hardware is a VERY cheap headset and a USB "button box"

For me the "button box" is not worth the cost of tying up a USB port and I sat on and broke the cheap headphone in a matter of weeks.

You also get the software BUT you can get the chat software for free at www.gamevoice.com. The only limit on the free version of the gamevoice software is that for every three free users there must be one licenced user, but if you only want to talk to one other person you are fine.

I agree with the comments on poor quality. I have a cable modem and my friends have DSL but we are separated by 1/2 the country. The quality is very sporatic, sometimes good but often the lag kills you (literally in games!!!!).

For a free alternative that supports an answeringmachine, does not require microsoft messenger, and works with linux:

www.speakfreely.org
 
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