I really appreciate the huge wealth of information everyone has shared in this forum. I wanted to contribute my experiences incase someone else could find it of value, here are my reviews of a few keyboards. I am not a gamer, use for programming and typing. I am a large tall person (big fat guy) with fairly large hands, people have called my fingers meat hooks.
Dell L100 rev A00 -- Have used various crummy keyboards over the years. Was helping clean out stuff from an office that had been closed and saved an L100 from the trash. Ergonomically it was more comfortable to type on than the one I was using at the time. I prefer to lay my arms on the desk and do not like wrist rests so the L100 with it's lower profile was a step up from my previous keyboard. Have read bunch of people here think the L100 is crap, from my perspective at the time, it was a one eyed man in the land of the blind.
Dell SK-8115 rev A03 DJ331 -- Couple years later and another office closing junk clearing, I came across this model and it was a nice feeling upgrade above the L100. Got my hands on a few other SK-8115's and noticed they each had the same model number but different revision and part numbers. Each has a different feel to them, I liked the A03 DJ331 the best. At the time the board had hardly any use to it and the keys were lighter to type on, crisper feeling and it wasn't too loud. The outer keys like the left shift and some others on the right have always had a little bit of bind to them if I didn't press on them correctly or was typing too fast, but later those keys started binding more to the point it was annoying and I went looking for a new keyboard.
Dell KB212-B DJ454 Rev A01 -- Was at Goodwill, saw they had a pile of keyboards so I rummaged through them and found the kb212-b that looked new. Sticker had a price of $2.99 so bought it and put it into service. This was more quiet than the SK-8115, easier to press keys and quieter but I didn't like the angle so I taped a 1/2” stick under the back side to elevate it a bit so was almost same height and angle as the 8115. It was better to type on than the sk-8115, even though the board itself looked and felt cheaper and flimsier.
Dell KB216p N6R8G rev A01 chiclet -- Saw one of these on ebay so I ordered it to give it a try. In the progressions of keyboards I was using, each succeeding one is better than last, but oh boy this one is so much better than all the previous! It has what looks like chiclet keys, but read in another thread a true “chiclet” is a completely flat key like the Radio Shack Color Computer has (had one of those back in the day). The KB216p keys have a slight depression in the middle to help guide my fingers to their center point. The board is a lot slimmer, lower and closer to the desk which at first I didn't like but after a few minutes it won me over. WAY quieter than the others, this is the most quiet and comfortable keyboard I have used to date. Tested the H key to see how much force it took to press the key, stacked some nickels on the key and when I got to 11, the key went from up to down.
Gateron Reds -- Wife is a serious gamer and she bought a mechanical keyboard, she told me I was a dinosaur and I needed to research what mechanical keys are like. Tried hers and man that keyboard is noisy compared to mine, but noticed how different the keys feel. My KB216p is a membrane so the force it takes to press the keys is that full stack of 11 nickels and then it collapses the dome and makes the connection. On her mechanical key, it only takes a stack of 7 or 8 nickels to get the key moving down enough to make contact. At 11 nickels the key will bottom out. Read in another thread the point of mechanical keys is not to bottom out, but only to press enough to make contact so results in less jarring on the fingers, don't have to bottom out like with a membrane. So I looked around and ordered a mechanical keyboard, will give it a try and see.
