My story how I came to my QF TK:
I was in need for a replace of my MS ergonomic keyboard 4000. It was too big, and i hated the keys. My Kinesis needs a companion, geekhack has a really bad influence on it/me. So i searched the internet, geekhack and two other boards.
My priorities were: mechanical keys, mx red or brown, function row and number row with no gap or at least easy to reach (in contrary to the ms ergonomic 4000); letter layout not important, best would be blank keycaps; small, either tenkeyless or mid-key-block-less. Price around 100€/130$ including taxes and shipping(30$-50$) to germany. I can tell you, finding the right product is quite a time consuming task.
So my favorites were the Vortex KBT Race (
http://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=121), the Noppoo choc mini (
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=13825.0), Keycool 84(
http://kc-keycool.com/product.php?mod=detail&id=20). It was not possible to find a Race to the price above with red or brown switches, even discarding the backlight. Mostely the board was out of stock. About the choco i read bad reviews regarding its qualitiy in othjer boards. I was happy to read the new news about a mini keyboard of Filco but i was quickly disappointed about the arrangement of the bottom row and the missing function key row. For gaming you need the F-keys quite often even for shortcuts or macros.
Then the tenkeyless of Filco came to my mind, but the price distracted me.
Searching for a comparison of the Race and Keycool 84 I found the Coolmaster Rapid and after realiszing that the Quickfire TK (red mx, red backlight) is nearly the same size but more usefull* the tk became my favorite. And one BIG point: it is available in germany for 75€ incl. shipping and german layout (ok i don't really need that).
So I ordered it and I was going to take a closer look at the keycool 84 too. But Hong Kong (ebay reseller location) celebrates new year, so i postponed it. Now typing on the Quickfire TK I don't really need the keycool 84 anymore. Only my curiosity bothers me... to try to even take a look, yeah you can sell it afterwards... ;-)
*[Why Quickfire TK] it is very likely that you do not need numpad and arrow keys at the same time. At least for me. I use Del and Backspace, Pos1 and End quite often with arrow keys to navigate in text files, numbers come to use, when typing codes, pins and so on, it is easier for one hand to type a lot of numbers, and it is easier to remember -> motoric memory
Well I also will o-ring-mod my quickfire tk. Qualitiy is quite good. Keyboard is heavy enough to stay where it was put. I am not sure about the durability of the key painting, because the caps are clear for back light and painted/coated black. We'll see.