...Overall, the switches are quieter than I expected...
If you really mean the switches, and not the keys—well, yeah, they're HE switches. You probably meant the keys, though.
I'm starting to look into 85g springs for next time.
Cool! Wonder how close that'll end up feeling like a Model F?
I do have a magnetic screwdriver...
Yes, we've heard that about you. :?D
The similarities I see between the Unicomp and XMIT are they are both priced too low. Come on now, you are in a market where people are buying $200+ (Realforce) rubber domes. Now maybe if you had a competitor I can understand wanting to stay competitive... I guess what I'm trying to say is right now the economy is relatively (compared to 2007-2009) stable. Don't be afraid to ask for more money to deliver a better product...
That said, you have to admire XMIT for keeping the prices on these initial models so reasonable. Because these are so unlike other boards being made today, he could've decided to use "prestige pricing" (pricing something extra-high to emphasize its novelty). Instead, he encouraged more of us to opt in. He's clearly interested in feedback, too, and working with his manufacturer to create even better stuff—and the more people you have using your keyboards, the more you can learn about how they're performing. It seems to me one of his primary concerns is building a brand people can trust.
Insinuating these keyboards are even in the same league is laughable at best. I mean if you compared it to a royal kludge maybe, but there again there's a reason those are so cheap... I'm glad I stayed away from this buy...
That said, dude, you'll never
really know what you think of these boards till you try one. As peeps point out all the time here, keyboards are notoriously subjective.
My board's waiting at the P.O., so I won't have my mitts on it till tonight. But I'm guessing it'll be
so smooth, my initial reaction might be that it felt "cheap". That's what happened with another Chinese board I acquired recently, with Gateron Blacks. They were so smooth, the board felt insubstantial. Only after doing some real typing on it did I realize what a quality thing it was.
Unicomps QC isn't THAT bad though. All of the issues I have seen on Unicomp boards stem from creaky cases with poor molding quality.
For what it's worth, those
creaks are easily fixed, and the molding flaws are usually insignificant (e.g. some "bloom" on a case's bottom, which you normally don't even see).
Not to get too far off-topic, but: Keep in mind that original IBM/Lexmark Model M's sold for $300–400 each, in '80s/'90s dollars, and were sold in such quantities they had to be shipped off by rail. (That
rail siding still exists beside the Unicomp factory.)
Unicomp's making a valiant effort to keep BS boards alive—not to make huge profits (which is unlikely with such a niche product anyway), but because they think the BS board is an engineering marvel that's worth keeping around. To encourage people to try them, they're keeping them under $100. What's more, they're making them in the U.S., which is practically unheard of these days.
To pull off all that, some concessions were necessary, as long as the true BS typing experience was preserved. They've done that, IMHO, which is pretty amazing. So I think we KB
enthusiasts can cut them some slack.