I want to update my review at this time. I now have a Type Heaven at home and one at the office, and it's all I've been using for, well, about two weeks now. I really wasn't using this until about two weeks ago. Now I am.
So far, I have no idea if I will like it a lot better than the Cherry Browns and be glad I changed, or if I'll end up liking it a lot less than the Cherry Browns and going back to the Browns.
The reason is because this is taking some real getting used to after a few years of using the Browns (and loving them). It's a very, very different keyboard than the Browns.
I have no idea how long it will take before I can really judge -- or how long I even plan to hang in there trying before I either have an ah-ha moment or give up.
Let me try to explain. When I was younger I bought a sports car (used) with a stick shift. It wasn't my first stick shift but it was my first sports car on that level. About three months after I bought it, I took it to the dealer's service center and said there was something wrong with the clutch or transmission -- it just wouldn't shift smoothly in all the time I owned it. I drove it to show the serviceman what I meant. Then he jumped behind the wheel and took me for a ride around the block and he raced through the gears like he was on a racetrack -- without it exhibiting even a hint of the issues that I was experiencing. He then asked me how long I owned the car, and when I said "About three months" he said to give it more time and get back with him in another few months.
Needless to say, in the weeks and months that followed I got the hang of it and was able to operate it almost as elegantly as he did. I never experienced those issues again for the next few years that I owned it.
That's what I suspect “may” be happening with this keyboard right now. I'm typing much slower, am making much more mistakes, and am generally laboring awkwardly to get to the right keys. I'm fumbling in a way I haven't in years. (I noticed that one reviewer who liked the feel of the keys also said he’s typing slower.)
I have no idea yet if it's just because of the keyboard or because of me – and if I’ll get the hang or not.
These keys are definitely smoother or "softer" than the Browns. I don't care if all the specs between this board and the Cherry Brown boards say they're all 45-gram keys – which is what they say. These have less resistance. At least, that's how it "feels". (Ripster, where are you when we need you?) Someone in one review about Topres described them as feeling "buttery", and that's not so far off from how they feel to me. While the Browns sometimes had me eventually feeling like my fingers were getting a bit fatigued -- just barely and pretty rarely but enough to catch my attention for a moment on occasion -- I don't feel that happening here, at least not as yet. I guess all the fumbling is slowing me down enough to give my fingers a momentary rest here and there, for all I know, but I’m pretty sure these are just softer and will be causing less fatigue or no fatigue at al even after hours and hours of non-stop typing – which is consistent with what a few other reviewers have reported.
Maybe the fumbling won't end or won't diminish enough to be acceptable. Maybe it's because there's more travel with these and I end up hitting the sides of other keys. I haven't measured or checked specs on the travel on the Type Heaven or on the Browns, but I know this feels like it has much more travel, which frankly means more work and may be the whole problem, which may be beyond anything I'll resolve with reprogramming my muscle memory. Of course, my Browns boards all have o-rings added, which not only reduces travel from their factory travel a bit, but also adds a bit of bounce to the keys, or so I would assume.
Which may be the other reason I'm having issues adapting to this keyboard. By being softer keys -- having less resistance (or at least certainly feeling that way) -- it seems I'm also noticing less power in the "return" or "bounce-back" (there may be a more appropriate keyboard-lingo term -- I'm sure there is), and it may be that that little less crispness or speed to the bounce-back is largely what's throwing off my rhythm, which would of course seem insurmountable even with all the experience in the world.
Of course, I'm not sure if this sense of travel and sense of bounce-back is really indicative of what's going on in the mechanics or not (or, for that matter, whether these keys are even softer than the Browns or not).
Then there’s the issue of whether or not I’m bottoming out, which is a concept I read about on this forum a lot but frankly I can’t really relate to. As far as I know, I always bottom out when I type, and always will. Maybe sometimes I don’t, but usually I do. Maybe for someone else it would be easier because they don’t bottom out. I have no idea what that would be like and don’t expect to experience that in my lifetime.
So far I can't begin to guess whether I'm likely to adapt and master this thing with reprogrammed muscle memory.
I'm curious to take this further. Part of me is wondering whether these keys aren't a more finely tuned machine in the fact that the keys are softer. At times I feel like it accommodates such fast speed that my old habits aren't yet ready to keep up with it -- I keep feeling like I have to just consciously think about where the keys are and where I'm going, and that when I do that I can type at the speeds I'm normally accustomed to typing at without having any issues at all -- and with less fatigue no matter how long I type.
Maybe I’m going through more movement and it just isn’t going to be as fast or as comfortable over time.
Maybe, for all I know, I just got my first sports car and it's going to take a few months of experience before I can operate the way it's meant to be operated.
For now, I’m often feeling like I want my Browns back. I’m about to start switching back and forth between the Type Heaven and Browns to see how that goes.
