[Razer] Razer Synapse 2.0 Used For Always-On Data Mining - Page 45

It might sound funny, but it's not. It's getting out of control.

What's next? Imagine cars with feature like that. They know how fast you go, where you go (they can map location to stores, gas stations, etc), financial arm of manufacturer will know how much you make. I am okay with no privacy online notion . . . but no privacy at home, on the road, in bedroom . . . that's scary.

Go to the site, they "Unhid" all the old drivers.
It should say legacy, and when you dl, should be 1.05 drivers.
Note the fine print, IF you did run Synapse, it will say you have a pending firmware update for the keyboard. It will NOT have any kind of changelog. It will BLOCK ALL features until you install said firmware update.
If you update, you CANNOT run legacy drivers anymore.
This doesn't seem to apply for my Blue Naga, but sure's **** got me in the ass for the keyboard, so now I can't roll back if I wanted to.
I like how the rep asked if I had firmware 2.03. I said how the **** should I know, Synapse doesn't report your current firmware, nor does it supply information on what version is pending or a changelog on why. So on that note changelog should just say:
v2.03: Broke legacy compatibility, force sucker customer to use Synapse 2.0

what i find most sad out of all this, in the grand scheme of things, i can see more companies moving towards this direction....

Yes... and I think one has to be "strict" and not let them get through with that. So Razer implements an offline mode? Why? Because everyone cried out loud. And they say "we save nothing but your email and name".. for how long? Next year there is an update, and you either buy a new mouse, stick with the old driver (in case you aren't forced to update, remember they first removed all legacy drivers) or agree that they monitor whatever they want. And they will do it more silent, more sneaky, so few enough people notice it and they can stay with it.

Byebye Razer, Steelseries/Roccat here I come (Until these companies screw as well..).

Mouse companies could become the next gatekeepers of consumer tracking. Imagine a mouse that can track where you're clicking, 24/7.

I'm not opposed to cloud syncing of profiles at all. The issue is the implementation. Save everything as an INI file locally, and then have the client attempt to sync it with the "cloud" at user-determined intervals, including manual syncing and having the option to turn off syncing entirely. Do this at face value without any shady terms in their TOS and nothing subversive in their actual software, and I'll be perfectly fine with the whole thing.

Said the man who invented fine print.

Yea i am using Synapse and it worked now. Now i have no problems. Sucks we're forced to use it if we wanted new products from them. Not sure if i am ready to leave Razer yet cuz i never had problems but i still think it'd be nice if they stop making these anyways. Annoying to see command prompt messages when installing Razer drivers. I don't like not seeing what is being installed though but i trust them anyways because we're customers and we can sue if we find a leaked information which i doubt we will.

The shame is that they are a hardware company and I like the hardware.
Then they manage to jack it up from the software perspective.

I've been looking up mouse reviews and was planning on purchasing a Naga Epic during the sales...

I'm absolutely stunned by how stupid Razer could be to make this kind of a decision.

This reminds me very closely of the Western Digital MyBook External Hard Drives debacle, involving their sudden inclusion of "WD SmartWare software", a Virtual CD program that installed itself whenever you plugged in the external hard drive.

Basically it was an unremovable partition on the external hard drive that not only ate up HD space that you couldn't get back, but caused a Virtual CD Drive to appear under My Computer whenever you plugged it into your computer. The problem was compounded if you had more than one of them plugged in at the same time, because then multiple Virtual CD Rom drives would litter your My Computer screen (one for each external hard drive).

Reformatting the external hard drive couldn't even get rid of it - it was hardware locked in some crazy manner. It was on everything (and probably still is) from their most basic "MyBook Essential" line of external hard drives, all the way to their top-of-the-line Professional series.

Upon learning that the company was going to provide no way to disable the software, I promptly returned my drive for a refund, and have never directly purchased a Western Digital product since then. That was ~2010.

This lunacy that Razer is performing with unnecessary software locks is an outrage. Seriously, how much on-board storage space can you possibly need for some drivers and customized configurations? 512MB? 1GB at most? There's absolutely no truth for saying that the reason is to "reduce cost for the consumer" - that little bit memory can be gotten for such a small amount that it should be a complete non-issue.

I'm definitely not buying a Razer product now until this issue is completely removed. There's plenty of other companies selling mice and other peripherals that don't have ridiculous restrictions and invasive software.

Razer: you just broke something that didn't need fixing in the first place. You're not only screwing your customers, you're screwing yourself too.