Well, in case anyone reading this is curious, I tried the following keyboards to end up where I am now:
- Das Professional S (cherry brown)
- Razer Black Widow Ultimate (cherry blue)
- Topre Realforce weighted
- Deck Legend (cherry clear)
(are there other keyboard types you think I should try? Or do these 4 pretty much cover it?)
I did not care at all for the uber-noisiness of the blue switches. Since you can get the same feel without the loud clicking, I feel it's pointless. The Razer keyboard has some other problems, like the gloss finish which gets terribly smudged and a slightly non-standard layout, just enough to be annoying -- namely the offset function keys.
The brown switches on the Das were too weak for me. I'm a "hard" typist and it felt mushy to me.
The Topre had a very, very good feel -- but once I had the Deck (frost, white) in hand it was love at first touch. The clear switches have a firm feel that I prefer, with a nice inflection point when the key actuates.
I think what I learned was a) you don't need a loud click to have a good mechanical action and b) I am a hard typist and prefer very firm keys.
And, one last plug -- I invite everyone here to check out our awesome network of technical Q&A sites and infect them with your awesome brand of keyboard geekery!
http://stackexchange.com/sites
