Yesterday, I was walking around in Sim Lim Square in the afternoon, when I passed Tec-Drome (5th floor SLS) and I heard screams coming from within. Well, not exactly the screams you hear from a well endowed woman, but that kind of howling scream you hear from a mongol barbarian!

I ran inside the shop, and lo and behold! I saw a muscular giant of a man, sweat on his brow, muscles rippling and a perpetual snarl on his face, holding some funny looking hi-tech weapon on his hand. He was gyrating, screaming curses, howling and he was jumping around like a blithering idiot. And the newest Need For Speed III was playing on the screen.

What the hell! He was steering the Diablo with the stupid thing in his hand. He was not pressing any buttons! He was just treating the controller like a steering wheel, not attached to anything, but rotating it in freespace!

I pushed that lout away, snatched the controller just drove like a maniac.

My god, what a drive! Pinpoint accurate steering, perfect mapping between the controller and the steering wheel on the monitor. It's just like a real steering wheel, floating in free space!

10 seconds of maniacal driving, I screamed too. I threw the controller away, made the sign of the cross to it, and screamed `Back! You evil thing! Back! Spawn of the ... ' Yeah, it was that kickass!!!

I screamed to Mr. Wu, the boss, to prepare one for my purchase. Took my NETS out, paid for it hurriedly, and went back to my office. Yeah, I spent a few miserable hours waiting to go home to unleash my newest toy - the Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro..

Back home, I tore the box apart and spilled all the contents on the floor. One small little converter cable spilled out, and my heart stopped! It's USB! It's USB!!!! The little converter is a joystick-to-USB connector, so you can use the Freestyle either with a joystick port or with the USB.

When I tried to plug in the USB, I got another surprise. My BH6 motherboard has 2, yes, TWO USB connectors. Most of the other mobos I've seen only have one. 2 is cool!

The steering is well calibrated, very controllable, and the sensitivity is adjustable within the game. There are 10 controller buttons in all, so you should be able to control everything with it. I packed up my previous gamepad, the Thrustmaster Rage 3D pro, and hope I can find a sucker to dump it off to. (Anybody interested? Thrustmaster Rage 3D Pro, S$45 ONO, mint condition, only used to play Final Fantasy 7, meaning 150 hours of use, email me)

The author is a member of the Nerdic race, speaks Geek only. No there's no spelling error here, it's not Nordic, and it's not Greek.