Review: Pertelian X0240

The Pertelian X0240 is a USB LCD device that allows you to frag away, while still keeping up to date with your PC’s instant messaging software, incoming emails, MP3 and internet radio playback – all without having to interrupt your gaming session.

The device is easy to install, simply download the latest software and the .NET 2 framework, plug the device into a USB port and you are away. It’s worth reading over the manual too, since there are quite a few shortcuts etc and it nicely breaks down how to navigate around between the various menus etc.

Gaming & IM
In the screenshots I was testing using Yahoo! Messenger and a classic deathmatch, the Edge on quake2. I had a quick read of the manual which told me to change an option in the messaging client, to stop chat windows popping up and sending them to the systray. This stops any notifications appearing during your game and allows them to come directly to the device.

There isn’t much configuration needed for IM and it worked out of the box, although there were two notable options, one to stop the device from flashing upon new messages and another the poll interval on how quickly the messages appear from IM to the device, the default was set to 2 seconds which seemed to work nice enough.

When a message comes in there are 3 views, the first shows the nickname and the amount of unread messages in brackets, the next shows IM conversations one line at a time, the other shows the last few lines of conversation – I found this the most useful and that is the view shown in the screenshot to the left. You can also reply to conversations via the pertelian too which is also useful for returning abuse to fellow players and so forth.

Media Control
The device can be used to control various media players including Windows media player, we used winamp to test it. You can simply have the device echo information about the playing song, such as the track name and time played or you can go through and actually control the songs i.e pause / stop / change volume etc. There is also an interesting option to search your itunes collection from the pertelian and play straight from that which again saves you quitting out from a game.

RSS Viewer
This screenshot shows RSS viewer on the device running through the GadgetSpy RSS feed. The feeds scroll across the screen (configurable speed) and if you have multiple RSS feeds you can navigate through and select an individual feed

Network speeds
This monitors your network throughput, this would have been great back in the modem days when a 200ms ping was good, I personally don’t find this as useful now in the days of LAN / broadband connectivity.

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Here is a breakdown of the device specs & features

Hitachi HD44780 based LCD character display

LCD inside a compact 4.5″ x 2.5″ x 0.85″ enclosure

New larger LCD display sporting 20 columns by 4 lines text display with font size 5×7 dots

Built in characters plus 8 user defined characters

Electroluminescent light green backlight

Also includes velcro attachment

Includes custom stand

USB 1.0+ interface

Communicate over USB interface with attached 6′ cable

Features

POP email checking and reading email headers

Unique Instant Messenger (ICQ, AIM, YAHOO) interface to reply to messages while inside a game or other application

Play, Stop, Pause, Rewind, and Fast Foward through playlists on supported media applications (Windows Media Player, Winamp, iTunes) plus:

• Song search by title, artist, or track number for supported media applications
• UltraSeek feature which automatically previews tracks in the middle of the song
• Audio volume adjustment for system and supported media applications

Real-Time Stock Ticker with detailed stock information

Real-Time Network bandwidth usage

System information (CPU usage/Memory usage/IP information/Disk drive usage/Processes and thread usage/Uptime)

Local Weather information and 5-day forcast

Quick Memo to quickly jot down notes

Customizable hotkeys for quick and easy control

Automatically checks for latest version and upgrades

Version 2 of the Gameoptics software package includes two brand new and exciting features!

Sports Center – giving you real time sports scores

RSS feed aggregate

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I found the device useful for gaming and the instant messaging side of things, it’s nice to be able to keep the conversation going without having to alt+tab back into Windows (and this often seems to cause graphical glitches / resolution problems etc. in a game when switching between the game and the desktop) I was suprised that there wasn’t IRC support on there as that is what I personally would have chosen over say AIM or Yahoo.

There were other nice features that I thought were good, including a pop3 mail checker and a stock monitor (great for those of you who recently bought GOOG shares and are watching them fall every day I didn’t look into the NFL and NBA score stuff being a brit and all but I’m sure fanatic yanks will like this feature, a UK premiership football script would be nice

I’m also a fan of the device showing system stats and so forth, there are obvious other uses outside gaming. Say you were a sysadmin it would be great if it could show you current remote logins to a machine, or list the most recent firewall alerts for example. There is a full developer API and a developer forum here where there are mentions to progress with both Linux and OS X.

Useful Links
Pertelian downloads (get the latest software, lots of bug fixes and the one shipped with the CD is old
$69.99 @ ThinkGeek
X0420 documentation – RTFM!
MS .NET 2 framework - Required for the software to work

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