ASUS Orion PRO ROG headset review

Long time, no post. That's a bad thing but jump right in the middle of a new post by a review of the ASUS Orion PRO headset.

I looked for a headset with decent sound quality and comfortable wear for a reasonable price. I guess most people have these points on their priority list. I already have a Sennheiser HD515 which has a really good sound quality but not too durable and also it doesn't have a mic so I kept this for music purposes. Also since our daughter born the overall noise in our apartment increased big time. So an open type headphone is less practical.

The ASUS headset comes with the Spitfire USB powered small headphone amp with three buttons: FPS, SURROUND and AMP. It has a fixed USB cable and two 3.5" jack ports for the headphone and mic. All included cables are great quality, looks durable and sleeved. They included a cable holder kinda thingy but this isn't holding too tight so after some light usage it usually pops open.

Good looking stuff

Mic pulled out

The headphone is full plastic, the ear pods made of a leather like material (probably some plastic) but it is soft and I have no issue keeping that on my head for longer periods. The noise isolation (passive) is good for home usage. I can hear talking, phone ringing, baby crying around me but much less disturbing than with a simple open headphone.

Cable holding thingy

Sound quality is really subjective. I feel the Sennheiser HD515 better with wider sound range. I did not tried the ASUS without the USB amplifier thing and after several months I feel the best sound quality for both music/gaming is keeping the FPS and AMP option on.

Small controller to mute the mic and adjust headphone volume

Overall I think it is a good gaming headset. The price for it + the USB amp is OK but if you already have a good sound card and you don't need the USB amp then I'd recommend to find a better quality gear for the same price. Mainly for music, movie purposes it is definitely a not recommended due the sound quality. For this price range it is easy to find a better headphone.

Java vulnerabilities

Since the big news about Java vulnerabilities, it seems we get almost daily updates to Java client. It seems Oracle trying hard to save their crap. Java is good but when websites using it (like banks for their online access) is bad. And since most companies disabled Java in their browsers or operating systems it is more and more difficult to use especially for novice users who just want to click & bank. I hope companies realizes the issue and start moving forward from Java to something better back end and pure HTML/CSS/JS on user end.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2026990/oracle-rushes-out-another-java-update-fixing-50-vulnerabilities.html

Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7

Just installed it. Funny because it asked for a restart. A web brwoser. It seems Microsoft still integrating their browser a bit too deep into the operating system.

I'm a Chrome user but due to web dev, I have to keep IE and other browsers for testing purposes. 

This update also caused some issue in Desktop Gadgets. We using "DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient()" to render UI in the gadget and it seems this isn't working properly now. Thanks MS, time to debug :P

The browser looks like IE9, so far. I hope they did not make any other problems because IE browsers getting better and better since IE7 or IE8...  I remember that IE6/7 caused some sleepless nights to tweak the HTML/CSS for web pages.

Update: I've found the answer for the problem. If you ran into the same problem then here is the info about the change: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/hh801215(v=vs.85).aspx