I had an original Deathadder. It lasted 3.5 years and then it would cut out. I bought a Deathadder 3500 to replace it and it's still golden. That was about a year and a half ago. I bought a Naga since then and, though the first one had a squeaky wheel, the one I replaced it with works great.
A gaming mouse that I use day in, day out, for 3.5 years is pretty good. My Logitech MX518 didn't even last that long. It died quiet, miserable death after less than 2 years. Meanwhile, my MS Intellimouse 3 is still working and I bought it when they first came out.
I like my eXactmat I got for $20 for the metal frame. It keeps my hand cool.
Now, I did try Razer's audio solution (the real 5.1 headphones, not the simulated) and I found them to be... well, suck. For $130, they had horrible audio quality. In the end, I returned them and replaced them with an Audio-Technica ATH-AD900 I got for $30 more. Not 5.1, but the stage and sound quality are leagues above the Razer crap. Haven't gone back.
I think my biggest disappointment with Razer is the way they handled their new Nostromo gaming pad. It's a Belkin N52te with larger cache and new drivers. Instead of giving Belkin users (many of whom bought the N52te because it was "Powered by Razer") driver updates, too, they locked the drivers and firmware down to prevent the N52te from using the Nostromo drivers. Even though they are the same hardware. Same shape. Differences are the painted font on the keys, the option to turn the lights off via software, the palm-rest having a Razer logo instead of the word, "Belkin," and the option to store more profiles because of the larger flash storage built-in. The fact that the Nostromo is essentially the same hardware is obvious when you look on the bottom of it and find a switch to turn off the lights manually, something which just doesn't exist on any other Razer mouse or keyboard but exists in exactly the same config on the N52te.
Considering performance-wise so little has changed between the N52te that is being clearanced everywhere and the Nostromo which is being listed now as "new" and at $60-80, I think Razer would have done their users some good by supporting the old school as well as the new.
Instead, they're trying to get us all to go buy the same device with a different name to get driver support. This is in the face of the fact that one of the N52te's advantages was the fact its drivers were going to be updated by...
You guessed it!
...by Razer. They never were. Belkin hacked a few drivers together. That's what rankles me with regards to Razer. I've not had a problem with their mice any more than I've had with Microsoft or Logitech, though. I had a MS Mouse (old one, before Intellimouse) fail eventually, plus a wireless kb/m set that failed. Logitech made my original G15 that still works fine, but also made two wireless kb/m sets that failed plus the MX518 and its predecessor on another PC.
If you use your PC for gaming, hardware will die. It's just wear and tear. Razer's been no better or worse for this in my experience.
