Slashdot Mirror
Mechanical 'Clicky' Keyboards Still Have Followers (Video)
For a good number of years, the sound of the old IBM or other mechanical keyboard clacking away was the sound of programmers (or writers) at work on their computers. Then, according to Edgar Matias, president and cofounder of the Matias Corporation, computer companies started using membrane switches and other cheaper ways to make keyboards, which made a lot of people mutter curse words under their breath as they beat their fingers against keys that had to go all the way to the bottom of their travel to work, unlike the good old mechanical keyboards we once knew and loved.
Enter Edgar Matias, who started out making the half keyboard, which is like a chorded keyboard except that you can use your QWERTY typing skills with little modification -- assuming you or your boss has $595 (!) to lay out on a keyboard. But after that Edgar started making QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards for semi-competitive prices. FYI: No Slashdot person got a free keyboard (or extra money) for making this video, but I have a Matias keyboard, and in my opinion it's far better than the cheapie it replaced. A lot of other people seem to want "real" keyboards, too, which they buy from Matias or from other companies such as Unicomp, which makes keyboards just like the classic, heavily-loved IBM Model M. Again, I've owned a Unicomp keyboard (that I bought; it was not a giveaway) and it was excellent. Both companies put out quality products that are far easier on your hands and wrists than the $10 or $20 keyboards sold by big box electronics retailers.
Enter Edgar Matias, who started out making the half keyboard, which is like a chorded keyboard except that you can use your QWERTY typing skills with little modification -- assuming you or your boss has $595 (!) to lay out on a keyboard. But after that Edgar started making QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards for semi-competitive prices. FYI: No Slashdot person got a free keyboard (or extra money) for making this video, but I have a Matias keyboard, and in my opinion it's far better than the cheapie it replaced. A lot of other people seem to want "real" keyboards, too, which they buy from Matias or from other companies such as Unicomp, which makes keyboards just like the classic, heavily-loved IBM Model M. Again, I've owned a Unicomp keyboard (that I bought; it was not a giveaway) and it was excellent. Both companies put out quality products that are far easier on your hands and wrists than the $10 or $20 keyboards sold by big box electronics retailers.
I'm right handed, and I think a half-keyboard for the right hand would make much more sense. I only saw references to the left-hand one in the given link. I've found a number of good reasons to mouse on the "wrong" hand.
On another, more general note, mechanical does not have to mean clicky. I can't stand any extra noise, but I still like the feel of good mechanical keyboards, so something like Brown switches are a good compromise.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
You can't walk through the aisle of a Fry's or Best Buy without passing an array of mechanical keyboards. They're pretty much the de facto standard for gaming.
"still" have followers? They're mass market implements.
I'm all for clicky keyboards, but when your keyboard is priced at nearly $600 you can guarantee it's going to fail. No qwerty keyboard on the planet is worth $600.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The problem I have with current keyboards is not just the short travel and lack of clickyness, but the tiny height of the keys.
Instead of the tall keys with space between them for fingernail clearance, there are these thin squares maybe an eighth of an inch above a solid surface. If I don't keep all my fingernails cut short, when they go past the side of the key they hit the panel and the key doesn't "strike". Letters get dropped. (So I get to pick between typing well and playing the guitar. I pity those who must keyboard for a living but want long nails to maintain their social life.) The short travel means there's little margin for finger variation, so some letters, where my fingers don't depress the keys as far, normally, don't strike, while others, where I support the weight of my hands, do strike when they shouldn't, or strike multiply.
After over a year I haven't been able to adjust. You may have noticed that my spelling has gone to hell as a result: I have to do a lot more correction and sometimes miss fixing things up.
(The inadequately-configurable trackpads, in positions where they detect the palm resting on the laptop (or brushing them) and randomly jump the cursor or highlight whole paragraphs so the next keystroke replaces them, are no help, either.)
On the other hand, when the nails do hit the key, they quickly wear through the top level of black plastic, exposing the backlit transparent light below it. I replaced a laptop about a year ago and after about six months about a half-dozen heavily-used keys had their pretty letters obscured by the giant glow of the scoured away region.
I had been running on older thinkpads and toshibas, with classic keyboard-shaped keys, or at least the little fingertip cup and substantial fingernail clearance. Switching (in a two-dead-laptops-in-two-weeks emergency) to a lenovo z710, then to a company-supplied toshiba s75, both with the stupid "I'm so thin", square, low-travel, no-finger-cup keys has been a disaster.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Still" have followers? Mechanical keyboards have been making a huge comeback for years, and are pretty much a standard for gaming and other high-end self-built machines now. You don't have to spend anywhere near $500 to get a good one either. This article/video sounds like it was written for an audience from six years ago or something.
Love my Corsair K95. Marketed as a gaming keyboard (it's got fancy LEDs and 18 macro keys etc.) but works well for long coding sessions too.
You should be aware that some PS/2 Model M keyboards will not work with a USB-PS/2 adapter. Some keyboards draw too much power (amps?) for some USB-PS/2 adapters, even though both PS/2 and USB are 5v. So, you may replace your Model M with an (older) one and it suddenly won't work with your adapter or will drop at random times. There's no way to tell which adapter-keyboard combination will fail until you try it...
That's why I went with a Unicomp USB clicky keyboard, as they bought the factory & patents from Lexmark... (IBM -> Lexmark -> Unicomp)
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
There has been a near continuous stream of articles, videos, advertisement, and reviews of mechanical keyboards coming out over the last few years. They only 'went out of style' because they stopped making new models for a few years. That only lasted until the keyboard manufacturers saw how much we were paying for model Ms and wanted back in on the action.
OMG facts!
I got my CMStorm for $55 after $20 rebate from Newegg. It was shocking how much less the gaming peripheral companies could sell these for.
It's my normal-use typing keyboard that I use for gaming too. I got the Cherry MX Brown. Common types are:
Cherry MX Blue - classic clicky switch, half-way press
Cherry MX Red - pure gaming - key is light (a lot less force to push down) and must be pressed down all the way (to benefit double-tapping)
Cherry MX Brown - In-between blue and red
I initially purchased a Blue (from DAS), but I hated it (too heavy and noisy), and returned it to Amazon. Brown was perfect though. More info about switches here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/491...
What I would love is a "Good" keyboard. I have lots of computers so I do not want to spend $150 a pop for all of them. But I would love a keyboard better then the $12 specials, and the $50 keyboards really are not any better.
Then I believe Topre makes a keyboard that would be more to your liking.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Tried the Cherry MX too. Hated and returned it, then bought one from Unicomp. It's really NOT the same thing. The big difference is in how the click is generated and how the key-press is reported to the computer. With the Cherry MX, the fact that the keys are typically harder to push, (increased force required as compared with modern dome-switch and Apple-slim keyboards,) and the click it makes are INCIDENTAL to the function of sending the key-press to the computer. You can try this with your cherry MX. Press a button, "F" for example, all the way down, then let it up a little bit, not all the way, then press it again. The Cherry will send an F, and after a pause when you push down again, it will send a string of F's until you let up again, with NO second click associated with second and additional key-presses. They're basically just dome keyboards with a clicky module built under each key to SIMULATE the feel of using a real, true, ACTUAL buckling-spring keyboard, which they, (the Cherry-MX I tried, I think it was Blue, though might have been Red, wasn't, at any rate, and I could tell).
An IBM/Unicomp (original classic 'clicky' keyboard) will only acknowledge the FIRST press of a key until you let it far enough back up for the buckling spring to UNBUCKLE, (Cherry's don't do this,) and the rocker-like device at the bottom of the key to return to its original position. A TRUE buckling-spring keyboard, like those now made by Unicomp (and cost 5-10 times as much as your cheapie, throw-away keyboards at the bottom of the cost-range, to about the same to twice the cost of a decent, but still basically cheap keyboard, and less actually than really expensive, yet still inferior other keyboards that have lots of BS bells and whistles,) is mechanically different. The way buckling-spring KB's work is a rocker-plate with contacts on the bottom is held by the force of a mostly un-compressed spring pushing one side of it down. I believe this is the open-switch position, (though I am not 100% sure how the electrical part works). When the button is pushed down, the spring is compressed to a point where the force downward exceeds the force at which the spring can remain a vertical coil, and causes it to bulge to the side, or buckle. The only direction in which it can buckle, (due to the post projecting from the top-side of the rocker at the bottom that runs part-way up through the spring,) is in the direction that the rocker-plate is free to move, bringing the contacts on the underside of the switch in contact with contacts on the circuit board just below and partially exposed by the plastic panel that acts as a tray for all the tiny little rockers, which are each about the size of a fingernail.
A Unicomp buckling spring keyboard will run you about the same as a new Apple Keyboard from Apple, give or take a few bucks, depending on which one you buy. The prices are comparable, which IIRC is pretty impressive given that Apple's keyboards are made by child-slaves in China, and Unicomp manufactures its keyboards in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA employing REAL actual Americans while having to meet environmental regulations and workers' rights rules, etc. etc. etc., and having to pay their employees a living wage, which Apple does not, hence why Apple is a hugely valued company, while Unicomp has been in business for years but odds are, you've only just heard of them for the first time. Just got back from their site, it says they're made in Kentucky. That's in the US, for those of you who don't know where Kentucky is. It's by Tennessee, I think.
Source: I have actually taken apart and cleaned an actual, genuine IBM 82-key keyboard a few years ago. I recently bought a Unicomp keyboard, and observed it to be manufactured essentially the same way and exhibit the same behavior, though I did not actually disassemble it.
Footnote: a shocking amount of dust and crud manages to get up the sides of the wells that are where the keys ride up and down, and down t
If you start having pinched nerves or spasms of your inner arm muscles (mostly teres minor and brachialis) simply buy a second "micro" keyboard for $14 and put it off to the side of your other keyboard.
You type on the right half of the right keyboard and the left half of the left keyboard and your arms are in an open relaxed position. You won't be "clinching" your arms to your side any more.
It works. I did it. I recommended to others-- it worked for them. Everyone who has tried it so far has adapted in about 30 to 90 seconds.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I've had mine for 20 years, it spent 5 years as a toy for my kids and they did not manage to damage it, but I did need to degunk it before using again. I don't know why needing more effort lets me type faster and more accurately but it does. The fact that it can't host malicious firmware is another advantage that it has over newer USB keyboards.
My clicky keyboard is the basic one from monoprice.com, which was the cheapest I could find at them time. It has Cherry MX Blue switches and no funky lights or anything, and was about $60 without any rebates.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Here's a clicky keyboard for $60. I'm typing this post on one, and it's great.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I guess I've gotten used to the membrane keyboards - sure you have to push the keys further down, but I learned on a manual typewriter in high school, and switching to a Selectric was a real PITA - I found the touch was way too light. To each their own.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Edgar Matias saved the ALPS switch industry. His company, at significant expense, and through expensive trial-and-error, has succeeded in perfecting the manufacture of clicky and non-clicky ALPS switch clones.
While most of us keyboard enthusiasts extol the virtues of buckling-spring IBM/Lexmark keyboards continued by Unicomp, and the recent introduction of full Cherry MX Green heavy clicky switch keyboards (previously only used in spacebars alone), Matias is a true hero.
Newegg Rosewill/Striker, Newegg ABS, DS International, and Ducky have had reasonably good ALPS clones that have fallen out of production. But Matias continues to be the gold standard for those of us who appreciate the sound and feel of classic ALPS clicky and non-clicky keyboards.
It's a complicated and varied history in the original and clone ALPS switches if you're into that sort of thing.
Kriston
Keyboards? Voice recognition had rendered them obsolete. You are all living in the duck cages.
You might have mentioned that Unicomp basically IS the old IBM keyboard line in Lexington, KY. AFAIK IBM sold their manufacturing equipment (and probably their employees) to them when they stopped making keyboards themselves. (Lexington is where the Selectric typewriter was made, too.)
-- John Dierdorf, Austin TX
Started a new job about eight months ago. Asked for a Unicomp keyboard, but said I'd bring my own first so people have a chance to object before money is spent.
In a room with two other people, one didn't mind and the other did object. Went with a MS ergonomic 4000 or something.
Moved to another room. Room mate said he also owned a unicomp. Next room over had people sensitive to noise. We decided to both bring our buckling spring on April 1st and see what people say. March 31st, one of the next door programmers talks to me how another programmer in his room has noisy keyboard (membrane with keys not going up all the way, nothing on the order of magnitude of a buckling spring). Asks if he can move to our room. I put on a straight face and say "sure, come by tomorrow and see how things work out for you".
Due to unrelated circumstances, I am away from work for the next week. When I come back, to my surprise, next door programer has not moved in. It appears that, despite repeated assurances from my room mate that this is all just an April Fools joke, the mere fact that the keyboard is on my desk, unused, has deterred him from moving.
Shachar