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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: daerid on Mon, 11 July 2011, 00:06:15
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Just pulled out my old MS Natural 4000 for sh*ts and giggles. Typed on it for a few seconds, then promptly put it back in storage in disgust.
I seriously can't understand how I ever thought a rubber dome keyboard felt good. I mean, I'm sure there are some out there (OG Dell QuietKeys), but seriously...
squish squish squish. How'd we put up with those for so long without starting a revolution?
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I did the same yesterday with an old Saitek gaming keyboard... but rather than promptly putting it in the closet, I put it on eBay. :)
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That's a great idea! I've got two of 'em I can do that with :)
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Some dells are okay. But why bother when you got a topre :D.
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I leave one of my older boards with the clickity omron switch at work, some colleagues tried on it and quite a few sworn "There is no difference at all!" so there you go, our fingers are all spoiled!
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Well, I think it's more that some people just don't care. Those of us who make our money by our keyboards are fairly rare, over all. My family members like my HHKB (except the layout), but they think my buckling springs and ALPS keyboards are just too loud.
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WTF, i thought I had fully suppressed that horrible past...now you've brought it back up. I will send you the bull for my therapist.
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Lack of knowledge. After a while my keyboard wouldn't feel right and I would chuck and get another without understanding why. I was wearing the membranes down and the key feel was changing. I've been doing this for 10 years.
Killed my thumb on a MS Natural 4000 due to stiff spacebar, and decided enough was enough and did some research to try and understand why contemporary keyboards don't last as long.
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All the rest of the world are crazy to put up with $5 rubber dome keyboards. Either they are lack of knowledge or they are lack of money.
We are even crazier to spend $250 for a Topre which basically adds a spring to every rubber dome key.
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Ignorance is bliss.
They do not need to find out how many types of mechanical switches are there, get poisoned and spend all their money on keyboards and also figuring out how the group buy voting system works
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I agree, ignorance is the biggest factor in this I think. That, and there are some people who don't use computers enough to care about the difference.
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Hmmm ... for me it looks like this topic is hyped. Some rd or scissor keyboards aren't so bad as some people describe.
We used this kind of keyboards for many years and everything was fine but now everybody is blaming this kind of keyboards. This is not fair :biggrin1: . Please do not take this so seriously ;-) .
Anyway I will try a mechanical keyboard by myself and maybe afterwards I changed my mind but it is not easy to get one with a german layout. Up to now I found only few keyboards which fits my requirements (Filco, DAS, Qpad and Mionic.; I don't want to test Zowie, Razer, etc.).
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Hmmm ... for me it looks like this topic is hyped. Some rd or scissor keyboards aren't so bad as some people describe.
We used this kind of keyboards for many years and everything was fine but now everybody is blaming this kind of keyboards. This is not fair . Please do not take this so seriously ;-) .
Exactly. The border between liking and fanboysm is too blurred here.
Anyway I will try a mechanical keyboard by myself and maybe afterwards I changed my mind but it is not easy to get one with a german layout. Up to now I found only few keyboards which fits my requirements (Filco, DAS, Qpad and Mionic.; I don't want to test Zowie, Razer, etc.).
Remember that Germany is the Cherry country, you can find a zillion of cherry boards in your country, starting from 40€
http://www.preisroboter.de/search.php?search=cherry+g80&min=29&max=150
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Thanks for the hint but I know ;-).
The only thing which prevents my for buying one of them is, that the typing should be worse compared to other keyboards like Filco, DAS, etc. and I don't want to buy 2 or 3 or more keyboards. I hope I can live with only one.
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Thanks for the hint but I know ;-).
The only thing which prevents my for buying one of them is, that the typing should be worse compared to other keyboards like Filco, DAS, etc. and I don't want to buy 2 or 3 or more keyboards. I hope I can live with only one.
Cherry boards have a better feeling, better keycaps, and can be modded easily because plate mounted, the only drawback,( if we want to find one) is the look not too refined.
But be sure that a 40€ Cherry is surely a way better board than a 160€ Filco.
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How did I put up with buckling spring for so long?
When I go back now, they feel so stiff my fingers hurt.
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Now I'm confused because I read it the other way round.
Hmmm but they built the G80-3000 only with blue, clear and blacks. Unfortunately no browns. I will use this keyboard mainly for gaming (shooter) and writing (20%). Maybe I try a blue one.
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How did I put up with buckling spring for so long?
When I go back now, they feel so stiff my fingers hurt.
Haha, matches your avatar signature. At least me and keyb_gr had the same experience.
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Now I'm confused because I read it the other way round.
Oh.. if you read just GH seem that Filcos are the only MX boards worth.
Obviously Cherry and the German technology have still something to tell
Hmmm but they built the G80-3000 only with blue, clear and blacks. Unfortunately no browns.
Browns are a boring compromise, not too good and not too bad to do everything, with two cherry boards (e.g. a clear and a blue) you can get the ergo clears (http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:15658) which is an unbelievably good switch at 1/2 of the filco price
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I find some scissor boards quite nice to type on. Quite hard to find a full travel rubber dome board that isn't a mushy piece of crap.
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Keytronics and some of the old NMB rubber domes (Dell RT7D5JTW, few others) are quite good as far as feel. Also I've used the Dell/Silitek SK-8125 and they have really tactile domes stuffed into a mediocre board. If you do a dome transplant into a better board, they feel exceptional. Really loud and a really sharp tactile point.
MS 4000 is a piece of junk. They're incredibly mushy as far as rubber domes go.
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I find some scissor boards quite nice to type on. Quite hard to find a full travel rubber dome board that isn't a mushy piece of crap.
This. I still love typing on the Apple aluminum keyboard
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Ugh, daerid, really? That was the keyboard that convinced me that chiclet keys are of the devil. Nothing but pain after typing on it for more than about 90 minutes. Short throw keys are frickin' evil.
I moved on because I was tired of wearing out keyboards. 4 Sun Type 6 keyboards in less than 18 months? The exact timespan is harder to pin down than that, but still, that's ridiculous. And I don't mean the key feel changed. I mean some keys just stopped working. Same thing happened to my old powerbook. In both cases, it was the caps lock key, which I use as my control. It made me start to think that maybe because it was such a rarely used key, it was being given an inferior dome or something. But the dome was always broken when I opened it up to look.
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Just pulled out my old MS Natural 4000 for sh*ts and giggles. Typed on it for a few seconds, then promptly put it back in storage in disgust.
Yeah I've done that with my Ergo 4k boards, it really is disappointing key feel. Really pisses me off though because they did design comfortable hand positions with that board. Unfortunately curved ergo split boards + mechanical switches are just not that easy to make, thus the existance high end specialty RSI brands like Kinesis and Maltron. Still waiting on good ol' Truly Ergonomic though.
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Some of us just didn't realize that are Geekdom could INCLUDE keyboards.
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Do you need mechanical switches if the most typing you ever do is for Facebook updates? My capacitive touchscreen works great for that! =-D
Two very big selling points of RD boards:
- They can be made CHEAPLY (huge for $ conscious CIOs)
- They can be made very quiet (huge for cubicle farm America)
If I'm a CIO buying 1000 new systems, I can take the included keyboard at no extra cost. But I want to do the responsible thing and get quality/best-of-breed in everything. Besides "best of breed" sounds good when I'm talking to other CIOs.
Say I get a steal ($99 each) because I bought 1000 Filco browns (my current fav) at one time for my new systems. I can pay $99,000 (easily 10%+ of the entire budget for desktop replacements) for GOOD keyboards that very few people will appreciate. Most will complain about the noise and lack of "features". And then there is the one or two (aren't they in every crowd?) who would object with "I wanted a Unicomp/Topre/Model M/blues/blacks/reds". The CFO will flip his lid 5 times; I have a $5 million SAN deployment, a $500k router refresh project, and a $2 million JD Edwards implementation to worry about. (hypothetical, but you see it every day). Keyboards, as long as they work, aren't even on my "CIO radar". If I could save $500,000 in insurance with a "RSI Free" workplace initiative then maybe the good boards are worth it, but...
Nope. As the CIO I'm taking the freebie and I'll buy a nice board for the 3-ish people who want it bad enough to request a specific one. There won't be any keyboard envy because it's not supported and the others at large will wonder why you "downgraded".
And I have to be honest here: I work in a small cubicle farm and talk on the phone a lot for my job. I wouldn't want to sit in the middle of a bunch of Filco's, Unicomps, and Model M's.
A big plus for the RD manufacturer: For another ~32 cents you can add "advanced features" to it and sell it as a 50-150 dollar board.
Tell the world at large, who just don't type all that much, except in chat rooms and email, that they should pay between $150-300 USD for a wired keyboard with no volume or integrated music controls on it (or whatever)...when they can get wireless with music controls, and sometimes an included mouse that works on the same wireless controller, for $50-80. Or that same capability comes with the board included with their system.
Well, that's how the world at large gets to RD boards and why they will continue to do so, but, most of us here are at least a little wierd over our keyboards. I consider myself VERY moderate in that respect and I still can't explain this stuff to co-workers without a raised eye-brow. =-D
...how did we use RD boards for so long? Ignorance, economy (although my operations weren't cheap!), going with the flow. Wanting a COOL board instead of a highly functional typing interface. For the longest time, I was sold out to a NAME, my RD board cost $45 (I thought that was a lot) said "IBM" on it, and my wife thought it was too loud. I thought I was old school!
And...SOME RD boards really do provide decent tactile feedback until the rubber starts to wear, so I've heard.
One thing is for certain...as long as keyboards are needed for computers, RD or something like it will always be around, and it will be prevalent. This isn't the only area of society where we (collectively) wind up doing something that's bad for us because it is cheap, easy, and popular.
That's not to say that all new RD boards are bad, but they will wear faster than a mechanical, and almost ALL really nasty bad for you boards are RD.
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Just pulled out my old MS Natural 4000 for sh*ts and giggles. Typed on it for a few seconds, then promptly put it back in storage in disgust.
I seriously can't understand how I ever thought a rubber dome keyboard felt good. I mean, I'm sure there are some out there (OG Dell QuietKeys), but seriously...
Hi daerid... This is why I just opened a account on this site: I have always been typing on rubber dome or laptop and then a friend of a friend showed me a mechanical keyboard at his place and let me type on it. I don't know which keyboard it was but I immediately liked it and he told me to Google about keyboard "switches".
All I can tell is it has nothing to do with any keyboard I have used previously.
Now I have a lot to read here but I can tell one thing: if I come to this site it's because I do not want ever to buy another cheap keyboard in a store and then realize that it's not a nice feeling to type on.
I know it is going to cost me some money but I think it is going to be money well spent. When I came back home it was as you wrote "squish" "squish" "squish": now I need to find something better! I cannot explain why I liked his keyboard more than all the ones I have: it just feels better "under the fingers" or whatever you call it! I will not start a revolution as you wrote. But I will start my own typing revolution and I will come with a few questions.
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Hi daerid... This is why I just opened a account on this site: I have always been typing on rubber dome or laptop and then a friend of a friend showed me a mechanical keyboard at his place and let me type on it. I don't know which keyboard it was but I immediately liked it and he told me to Google about keyboard "switches".
All I can tell is it has nothing to do with any keyboard I have used previously.
Now I have a lot to read here but I can tell one thing: if I come to this site it's because I do not want ever to buy another cheap keyboard in a store and then realize that it's not a nice feeling to type on.
I know it is going to cost me some money but I think it is going to be money well spent. When I came back home it was as you wrote "squish" "squish" "squish": now I need to find something better! I cannot explain why I liked his keyboard more than all the ones I have: it just feels better "under the fingers" or whatever you call it! I will not start a revolution as you wrote. But I will start my own typing revolution and I will come with a few questions.
Awesome man! Welcome 2 GeekHack :) Yeah, you'll probably spend a lot of money, but most good mechanical boards have a high resale value, so you won't actually end up spending a lot of money to find the board you want.
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Ugh, daerid, really? That was the keyboard that convinced me that chiclet keys are of the devil. Nothing but pain after typing on it for more than about 90 minutes. Short throw keys are frickin' evil.
Diff'ren' strokes and all that. But yeah, most scissor/dome boards are horrible. But for some reason I really like the aluminum one. I guess I just adapt my typing to be very light on that board.
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This. I still love typing on the Apple aluminum keyboard
Same here. In work, I took one off a Mac Pro server to use on my machine. The feel is very crisp for a scissor board. I also find the ones on the Macbook Pro to feel quite similar, other Mac laptop's keyboards are a bit meh, I suspect this is possibly because of flex from the lower end laptop's plastic cases. (Though the Air one feels a bit meh to me too)
Ugh, daerid, really? That was the keyboard that convinced me that chiclet keys are of the devil. Nothing but pain after typing on it for more than about 90 minutes. Short throw keys are frickin' evil.
I type on it for hours on end in my job. No problems yet.
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Diff'ren' strokes and all that. But yeah, most scissor/dome boards are horrible. But for some reason I really like the aluminum one. I guess I just adapt my typing to be very light on that board.
I do most of my typing at work on a Thinkpad T510. Scissors on it aren't bad, I know there are rubber domes under them but the combo, for a laptop, seems to work well. Still waiting on my Poker keyboard to use it instead. Even though I know the chicklet keyboard is very similar to this laptop keyboard, I'm very gun shy of anything Apple right now that isn't a total mechanical play.
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Thanks for posting this topic Daerid,
I type a lot at work, where they use lenovo branded rubber domes. These keyboards get pounded on all day; one of these got so degraded that you have to bang the squeeky backspace key *really hard* to get it to work, which pisses me off to no end because I type almost all day at work. Then someone is like "I can fix that!" and blows canned air between the keys. (lol)
So I started googling for the best keyboard, figuring my fingers deserve better.. I find the das keyboard, but then I found the whole welly thread about das keyboard possible transposition issues here.. then I was hooked
2 years later I have a huge collection of mech boards. And they are *still* using the same defective squeeky backspace keyboard at work.
This also is one of my main concerns about topre boards; all rubber domes degrade over time; I'm not sure what a topre rubber dome board wouldn't degrade over time... the switching mechanism will still be good for a long time (spring / capacitative) but it might require a dome transplant at some point. Like a boob job revision after a number of years.
My 2 cents :)
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The issue with domes wearing out is an electrical contact problem, Topres avoid this because the only purpose of the dome is to provide tactility. In terms of feel, the spring seems to take some of the strain off the dome, so I'm not sure if it will go mushy as quickly as a regular board.
Then again, the tactile elements on Cherry/Alps switches wear out too, so it's not as if that's a problem that's unique to the Topre in terms of mechanical keyboards.
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Good point. I guess when my cherry browns start to wear down to cherry reds I'm gonna be disappointed.. I think the springs should stay good for a long time tho no?
The issue with domes wearing out is an electrical contact problem, Topres avoid this because the only purpose of the dome is to provide tactility. In terms of feel, the spring seems to take some of the strain off the dome, so I'm not sure if it will go mushy as quickly as a regular board.
Then again, the tactile elements on Cherry/Alps switches wear out too, so it's not as if that's a problem that's unique to the Topre in terms of mechanical keyboards.
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This also is one of my main concerns about topre boards; all rubber domes degrade over time;
Anything degrade over the time. The main difference is that you can replace a worn RD keyboard with 5/10 $ and 30 seconds, while to replace a linearized series of MX switches you need 50$ and 2 or three hours of work.
The difference is also that while a mech switch has more or less a definite number of strokes before getting worn, a RD can last 6 months or 15 years depending on a number of variables, usually unrelated to the price.
Right now I'm servicing some PC on small Internet point. It started in 1999, during this time I replaced every single component, but the keyboards (Fujitsu-Siemens) are still the same, have still the legends in place, and is still a pleasure to type on them.
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A RD board might "last" in the respect that it remains functional, but the increasing mushiness of the key feel happens much faster. Regardless, the issue of durability has always been a bit of a red herring, you're never going to "save money" by using a mechanical keyboard, but hey, I don't blame people for stretching a bit to justify their expensive keyboard hobby :)
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A RD board might "last" in the respect that it remains functional, but the increasing mushiness of the key feel happens much faster.
No, I'm not speaking about keyboards that sre completely not functional I'm speaking about keyboards that have minimal differences in feel after years of usage.
I don't blame people for stretching a bit to justify their expensive keyboard hobby :)
An hobby, by definition, shouldn't need any justification. It's fine by default.
Retrofitting to it rational motivations is basically a pointless exercise.
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Actually, after spending nearly $200 on NIB Sun Type 6 keyboards that were wearing out after only 4-5 months, I bought a Unicomp and a HHKB, for a little over $300, total. Given that I needed a new keyboard, there's about $50 that I saved by not buying one, so they just have to last as long as 5 Sun keyboards. Which, at the rate I was going through them, works out to about 2 years.
I'm pretty sure that will happen. Any time beyond that is "free." I still don't know why they were wearing out so quickly. I'm not a particularly heavy typer, but the control key (it's an actual control key on a Sun), was taking more and more force to actuate. To the point where it was annoying, and needed to be replaced.
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Retrofitting to it rational motivations is basically a pointless exercise.
Unless the hobby started due to rational motivations. But then, that wouldn't be "retrofitting" would it
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Retrofitting to it rational motivations is basically a pointless exercise.
Not when you have a wife to convince!
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Actually, after spending nearly $200 on NIB Sun Type 6 keyboards that were wearing out after only 4-5 months
As I said, no relation between price and quality, I have a type 6 and a type 4 and they are just crap
I bought a Unicomp and a HHKB
Funny to see how a membrane and a rubber dome keyboard are considered crap if placed in the same housing, but superb if placed in two different keyboards, isn't it ?
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Not when you have a wife to convince!
Good point.
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I do most of my typing at work on a Thinkpad T510. Scissors on it aren't bad, I know there are rubber domes under them but the combo, for a laptop, seems to work well. Still waiting on my Poker keyboard to use it instead. Even though I know the chicklet keyboard is very similar to this laptop keyboard, I'm very gun shy of anything Apple right now that isn't a total mechanical play.
I have a few thinkpads as well. I'm accustomed to the feel of their scissors and quite like them. They're quiet to boot and of course have the trackpointer. Newer ones have a trackpad as well but not my thing so I always disable them.
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Funny to see how a membrane and a rubber dome keyboard are considered crap if placed in the same housing, but superb if placed in two different keyboards, isn't it ?
It would be even funnier if the Topre was a rubber dome keyboard.
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It would be even funnier if the Topre was a rubber dome keyboard.
sorry, "cup rubber" keyboard.
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Well first, that was 4 keyboards. Second, it was the only keyboard I knew about at the time that was readily available in the correct layout. Third, regardless of whether the Unicomp is a membrane board or the HHKB is a rubber dome (which is arguable, at best), doesn't mean that either uses anywhere near the same tech. Besides, the Unicomp is proven tech, as shown by my more than 20 year old Model Ms, and is easy to repair is something does go wrong, unlike a typical rubber dome based membrane board.
And while you may disagree, which is your right, the fact is, the RealForce and HHKB are both of very high quality. Worth the price? Depends on who you are, what you want, etc. To me, the HHKB was worth every red cent. To you, obviously not. That's the beauty of options.
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And while you may disagree, which is your right, the fact is, the RealForce and HHKB are both of very high quality.
Exactly.
This means that while the switchless design will be, (more or less) unbreakable, the keyboard's feel is related to the materials used for the domes, to the design of stems the plastic used and so on.
So is not the tech used that matters but how it is applied, which in turn means that many RD are not durable or pleasurable, not because they are RD but just because they are products meant to be as cheap as possible to build, not because they are RD over membrane.
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So is not the tech used that matters but how it is applied, which in turn means that many RD are not durable or pleasurable, not because they are RD but just because they are products meant to be as cheap as possible to build, not because they are RD over membrane.
Pretty much so, yeah. There's plenty of oldschool rubber domes that have easily lasted 20 years.
I bet that with all costs considered (including disposal/recycling etc.), a durable rubber dome would have the lowest TCO per time span out of any kind of board. I still like my classic mechanicals though, repairability and all.