CM Storm NovaTouch TKL Available for Purchase

[_PixelNinja]

Seriously though. What if Razer was the company that put out the equivalent of the Novatouch (MX stems, Topre electronics)?? Would you still buy it? I hate to say it...but I think I would. Even if only to harvest the sliders to put them in a decent looking board.

I don't think I would to be honest. I'd be more likely to purchase Matt3o's sliders than an entire board and go through the hassle of harvesting off a Razer.

[daerid]

Link's broken

[Zeal]

Link's broken

Accidentally released the product page too early.
According to a live chat with CM, it'll be released on Sept 22.

[PadawanGeek]

I have ordered and paid for the Novatouch and Ducky YoTH Cherry Green in one fell swoop, needless to say I'm feeling the pinch now but that pain would subside when Endorphin's released as soon as I get the Novatouch in a few days' time. There are ready stock of them here, but the shop I get my keyboards from is givng me a pretty good discount, so I can wait a few days for it.  Will post pics when I get it...

[_PixelNinja]

I have ordered and paid for the Novatouch and Ducky YoTH Cherry Green in one fell swoop, needless to say I'm feeling the pinch now but that pain would subside when Endorphin's released as soon as I get the Novatouch in a few days' time. There are ready stock of them here, but the shop I get my keyboards from is givng me a pretty good discount, so I can wait a few days for it.  Will post pics when I get it...

Can't wait to see other people's thoughts on the Novatouch. It's a nice board IMO.

[Altis]

Yeah well my best friend Thomas goes to France most of summers and he usually says if you type a lot about 2-3 days you get full adapted. He says the worst is that you guys gotta hit shift to input numbers and that's a real hard sh1t to adapt to.

Still AZERTY is kindoff out of standard and i simply don't believe that it gives you any advantages against standard QWERTY, especially if you live in the USA you should convert for maximum compatibility with office noobs.

I type frequently in English and French and in my experience Azerty ISO FR is a badly designed layout. I find Qwerty ANSI + US International more functional and logical for French.

Accidentally putting your keyboard into Canada-French is a pretty common Canadian problem. I actually remove those profiles and US-Standard.

My dad just bought a computer and got an ISO French keyboard instead of the English one (in Ontario).

[RickyJ]

First thing I do with a fresh Windows install is to remove all but US-ANSI keyboard layouts, then remove the damn language bar.  Drivers and updates are next, lol.

[divito]

Accidentally putting your keyboard into Canada-French is a pretty common Canadian problem. I actually remove those profiles and US-Standard.

My dad just bought a computer and got an ISO French keyboard instead of the English one (in Ontario).

It's true. That's also why laptops at most major retailers infuriate me around here, with their ISO nonsense.

[Zeal]

Accidentally putting your keyboard into Canada-French is a pretty common Canadian problem. I actually remove those profiles and US-Standard.

My dad just bought a computer and got an ISO French keyboard instead of the English one (in Ontario).

It's true. That's also why laptops at most major retailers infuriate me around here, with their ISO nonsense.

Ugh, don't remind me about all the laptops being sold here. Something about they're not allowed to retail "US ANSI" counterparts of the laptops in Canada. -.-
Here's an image of the monstrosity we have to deal with:


I also hate how the FN key is always on the left. Why can't it be shifted on the right?

---

Anyways, back on topic. At least keyboards being sold here aren't in that multilingual layout.

[CaptLock]

I have ordered and paid for the Novatouch and Ducky YoTH Cherry Green in one fell swoop, needless to say I'm feeling the pinch now but that pain would subside when Endorphin's released as soon as I get the Novatouch in a few days' time. There are ready stock of them here, but the shop I get my keyboards from is givng me a pretty good discount, so I can wait a few days for it.  Will post pics when I get it...

Can't wait to see other people's thoughts on the Novatouch. It's a nice board IMO.

Me too.

[dantan]

I have ordered and paid for the Novatouch and Ducky YoTH Cherry Green in one fell swoop, needless to say I'm feeling the pinch now but that pain would subside when Endorphin's released as soon as I get the Novatouch in a few days' time. There are ready stock of them here, but the shop I get my keyboards from is givng me a pretty good discount, so I can wait a few days for it.  Will post pics when I get it...

Wow you have a lot of keyboards!

And that's a lot of money! Don't you run out of places to store your keyboards?

[Hyde]

Accidentally putting your keyboard into Canada-French is a pretty common Canadian problem. I actually remove those profiles and US-Standard.

My dad just bought a computer and got an ISO French keyboard instead of the English one (in Ontario).

It's true. That's also why laptops at most major retailers infuriate me around here, with their ISO nonsense.

Ugh, don't remind me about all the laptops being sold here. Something about they're not allowed to retail "US ANSI" counterparts of the laptops in Canada. -.-
Here's an image of the monstrosity we have to deal with:

Show Image

I also hate how the FN key is always on the left. Why can't it be shifted on the right?

---

Anyways, back on topic. At least keyboards being sold here aren't in that multilingual layout. :p

LOL my mom just recently got a laptop too and it bugs me everytime when I type on her laptop keyboard.  It's stupid because all desktop computer come with English ANSI keyboard and all laptop somehow all come with French ISO keyboard.

It's almost as if only French people buys laptops.

[PadawanGeek]

Was just informed that the Novatouch TKL is in stock and ready for collection. It's a tad late now, but I will definitely collect the kb tomorrow. Will post some pics, together with my other Topre keyboards....

[Grim Fandango]

Seriously though. What if Razer was the company that put out the equivalent of the Novatouch (MX stems, Topre electronics)?? Would you still buy it? I hate to say it...but I think I would. Even if only to harvest the sliders to put them in a decent looking board.

It would only affect my choice if it changes my expectation of the quality. For example, I would be more at ease buying from a brand that consistently makes good products instead of buying from a brand that has some bad products. But it would not influence me based on some snobbish idea that one brand is more respectable than another.

I think there are legit reasons why people expected a lower price. CM has done a great job competitively pricing good quality products in the past (that is why everyone has been repping the QFR for years now). Also, the price of the average Topre keyboard has dropped a lot, with the typheaven now being $150 on amazon, and Realforce being around $200. They are more affordable now, and I think people think of this as a trend.

If the price of the novatouch is $200, it is still comparable to other topre keyboards. So I do not think that price is surprising. That said, they do have some stiff competition in that upper segment and they may have to rely on the appeal of being able to use MX keycaps for people to pick the Novatouch over the competition.

[spiceBar]

Accidentally putting your keyboard into Canada-French is a pretty common Canadian problem. I actually remove those profiles and US-Standard.

My dad just bought a computer and got an ISO French keyboard instead of the English one (in Ontario).

It's true. That's also why laptops at most major retailers infuriate me around here, with their ISO nonsense.

Ugh, don't remind me about all the laptops being sold here. Something about they're not allowed to retail "US ANSI" counterparts of the laptops in Canada. -.-
Here's an image of the monstrosity we have to deal with:

Show Image

I also hate how the FN key is always on the left. Why can't it be shifted on the right?

---

Anyways, back on topic. At least keyboards being sold here aren't in that multilingual layout. :p

Eek! It's absolutely horrible.

It's not even ISO actually. There should be at least some spacing between these additional keys, Aspire apparently has not idea what they are doing.

BTW, I'm french and I use AZERTY, but on the ANSI layout. The ANSI layout is beautiful, and the large left Shift and large (and horizontal) Enter is much better.

My Realforces are in ANSI, and I look forward to some solution to put Cherry keycaps on them, because then I'll be able to put AZERTY keycaps (instead of stickers as I currently have).

[dorkvader]

BTW, I'm french and I use AZERTY, but on the ANSI layout. The ANSI layout is beautiful, and the large left Shift and large (and horizontal) Enter is much better.

My Realforces are in ANSI, and I look forward to some solution to put Cherry keycaps on them, because then I'll be able to put AZERTY keycaps (instead of stickers as I currently have).

Acer makes a lot of lower-end computers. The aspire one is a netbook by them that's pretty cheap. I hate how they've wedged a KB in there leaving so much extra room on the sides.

US international is a sweet layout.

With the proposed $200 price of the novatouch, I distinctly remember the QFR was like $99 when it was released. How many times do you see them on sale now for $60-$70? I expect the price to go down and (hopefully) be on sale for $150 some time in the future. We'll see.

[telegraphist]

This is going to be a hard sell at this price point. Speaking purely for my own view, I would rather spend the extra $15 and get the 55g Realforce.

In my opinion the undeniable huge advantage this NovaTouch TKL keyboard has is that unlike with other "true" TOPRE boards it's much easier to find the keys to customize it. For some reason those, who are fussy about this board forget that TOPRE keys are very expensive and very hard to come by, while Cherry MX are relatively abundant, have better variety, and cheaper than TOPRE. I wondered if it would be as easy to add the dampening O-rings as it is with "true" Cherry MX caps? Let me remind you that silencing the TOPRE boards is very complicated and elaborate process.

[pbtforever]

Don't think Orings going to work from the pics I've seen of the switches.

[CPTBadAss]

Don't think Orings going to work from the pics I've seen of the switches.

Sure they will. At Keycon, they brought o-rings for us to try out on the sample Novatouch. They worked.

[jameslr]

Can confirm. CM ships o-rings with the retail board. They work fine.