Blame Apple and Logitech for having me here :)

[mecano]

Hello board,

I'm lurking here for a week, reading you and you as well, gathering infos, trying to find my unicorn.
So first thank you, yes maybe you, for the sharing.

Yup, so, if Apple had a 60% backlit keyboard, I'd never had to look for one, if Logitech had a wired one, I'd never had to search for alternatives.

Well, that's not entirely true, my first rediscovering of mechanical keyboards is because of ergonomics, I wanted to try Bépo (french like Dvorak), found it plain awful for coding but tumbled on Ergos and Phantoms.

Then I busted one scissor keys keyboard trying to make it "speak more fluently" and luckily found an Apple Qwerty keyboard at a very affordable price in my area. With no other chance to grab a keyboard at that price which was both available, compatible and qwerty (mmm thrice ?) I tried, and what a relief qwerty was… even for accents, I'd rather hit twice a key with a modifier than having to move to R1! Also having one key for the accent and no dedicated accentuated keys simplifies by much the process. Oh, I'm french by the way.
But... this keyboard is far too large (my trackball is then too far) and doesn't have any backlight (even I sometime blind type I swear I don't do it on purpose) for my dark working environment.
Having moved to laptop for years, this is well cumbersome.

So I went there and here, trying to see what the world was at.
Reading you and maybe you as well.
Thought I found the grail several times but had to realize the cup was half full or the wine didn't had that shiny ruby.
The Noppoo Choc Mini was looking nice but not Mac compatible because of NKRO.
The Filco Majestouch Minila while attractive, was not backlit.
The KBT Race II, PCB mounted.
The Tex Beetle had 4 keys on the left of the space bar which I seeked because I want to mimic the MacBook keyboard (using a lot left modifier keys here) with the help of Karabiner, but alas no backlight.
The KBP V60 mini almost won despite having only 3 keys on the left, but I didn't found a retailer close enough to my place.
I then reconsidered the Poker 2 then the Deck82 (but couldn't stand the keys font).
Almost grab a Poker 2 then read that the KBT Pure Pro was not PCB mounted as I though but plated unlike his cousin the Pure.
This changed everything as I instantly found it at a (discounted?) price from a french retailer!
But… wait… AZERTY? only? all Qwertys sold out, from amazon uk? Sold out… Was I doomed?

Well, this has to be challenging after all, so this very Friday a KBT Pure Pro will land here.
It will have browns, violet backlight (because my eyes rods are green junkies on diet) and an ISO Azerty layout…
Which I will soon need help for to hunt key caps to convert it into an osx compatible qwerty

[Altis]

Seems like you've learned quite a bit in a week!

Welcome to the journey of finding that unicorn keyboard we're all after. Once you've tried all the boards out there, you'll try them all again with various keycaps!

[Evo_Spec]

Welcome to GH!

I see you've had quite the journey, luckily i like windows ANSI QWERTY so i haven't had to jump through hoops to find the right layout =)

[mecano]

Thanks for the warm welcomes. Typing on the pure pro right now, amazing keyboard...
Ahahah Altis, hope not! but yes it is very tempting to test all these cherry switches and must admit it is great fun to look at what people do with their keycaps layout.

Yes indeed, Evo, at first I was looking at ANSI QWERTY as I never fancied this awfull and huge ISO Enter key and because you named it, it's by far easier to locate keycaps but availability (most models are out of stock and you need to go through group buys and the delay it involves) was not there. Also finding the pure pro at $106 including shipping and receiving it 3 days after was just appealing!

[Bucake]

pure pro

WELCOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

edit: added more exclamation marks

[rowdy]

Welcome to Geekhack!

Living in Australia pretty much only ANSI QWERTY keyboards are available, generally with small enter and large backspace, just how I like them.

So often we hear of difficulties in Europe find a particular layout in ISO or ANSI, and then the difficulties start in finding replacement keycap sets that will properly fit.

Fortunately things are starting to get a little easier, thanks to a few large group buys earlier this year there the organisers went out of their way to try to cater for as many European and other layout keyboards as possible.  Now many group buys includes keycaps to suit most layouts.

[mecano]

Thanks Bucake and rowdy

Rowdy, the difficulty is even more step here for wanting to keep the backlight functionality, so that means laser etched keys for backlight keyboard (and not the translucent one), ISO layout, uncommon modifier keys sizes.

But I'm lucky I got a UK layout ducky shine 3 set from kustompcs (good price, they have a mixed set of UK+Numpad in French they sell for cheap, factory mistake?), so I'm now back to qwerty (well uk qwerty, I would rather had us qwerty, but still, better than azerty)
Now looking to relocate that fn key to the very left side, so to have a macbook like layout (which is one of the reasons why I choose the Pure Pro with it 4 left modifier keys) :
fn - ctrl - option - command
instead of :
ctrl - fn - option - command

Guess I'll have to open it and put the solder iron at work
Ducky Shine 3 keyset is nice here because it has a 1.25 fn key!
I'm looking for a backlit laser etched R1 OEM 'alt' key size 1 (using the right ALTGR on the left right now) and two "command" keys one size 1 and the other 1.25 but guess I'll never find some for backlit keyboards so may go with custom WASD ones.