Filco in Canada

[fantus]

After 5 hours of research and viewing through posts on this forum I have found that I should buy a Filco, cherry brown, tenkeyless, keyboard. The problem is that there is nowhere in Canada that stocks this item. I then searched for american retailers that could ship to UPS and then ship from there to Canada, but there were none of those either. The only Filco retailer i could find was amazon, and they were out of stock. Does anyone have some information as to how i could acquire this item at a relatively reasonable price? Preferably less than $150, but beggars cant be choosers. Thanks for any information.

I would also appreciate it if anyone knows a similar keyboard that is available in the U.S. ^^

[Surly73]

I used PCHome's global site back in March to get my Filco TKL w/ browns.  You could always go with a Leopold w/ browns from Elitekeyboards but you might cringe at the shipping cost even though it's in the US.  Or you could have some patience and use the buy/sell forum here.

[nikonf5]

I live in Toronto so I know where u r at.

Here are your options as I know them so far in addition to the ones mentioned above:

[1] Amazon to someone in the US and pick it up from them later or time it to your vacation.
Will be doing this myself later this week for pickup next month by gf in Miami for a Metallic Blue 104 with Blue's from Amazon.
My primary which is now my backup plan was [4].

[2] If you have friends who visit East Asia, have them buy it for you from there and bring it over.
Almost had this going for me as someone at work went to HK for almost a month but I realised too late.

[3] Order from KeyboardCo, have them send it by mail instead of courier and hope customs ignores it.

[4] Order it from qtan right here on GH [Elite in the Vendors forum] who you can pay via PayPal and who can ship it to you from various places in East Asia.
I am pretty sure you can have him declare the customs form just higher than US$20 [~35] so it doesnt make customs suspicious and even if you have to pay taxes, its a pretty low amount.

Remember, that if you go with [4], his Filco will come from East Asia where they are almost always sold WITH the key puller and a WASD set.

For colored blank replacement keycaps, you can use the WASD keyboard designer to check color placement and order from him as his shipping price is a dream.
He also stocks the O-ring mod which is better than the EK landing pads [I have both] and you can get a ring key-puller as well although I would personally go with a wire one, maybe from EK.
I wrote scripts to generate HTML files with all the possible color combos for the function, arrow, numpad, delpad and bottom row with spacebar keys and will be using these to make the final decision for my work Das and my home Filco.

Anyways, hope this helps and yes, this was typed on a Das with blues.  :-)

[pitashen]

If you are to order internationally, you could consider armygroup or pchome ($10 international shipping). Quite a few geekhackers have had experiences with those two Taiwanese online venders. A friend of mine from Canada order one from Armygroup, fast shipping and great service.

[litster]

Also try suntec in hong kong. http://www.hksuntec.com/filco.html

[Fuzzy Dunlop]

Fantus have you considered a Leopold? Same board, same switches, same build quality, minus the coppertone nameplate and $160 price tag.

[fantus]

Thanks for all of your suggestions and offers, I decided to just go with amazon and ordered a non-tenkeyless keyboard. I figured that if I'm investing $160 I want a return policy in case I do not enjoy mechanical keyboards as much as everyone else in the universe.  Should be here within 5-8 buisiness days, and then another X number of days for ups to ship it from Grand Forks ND to Manitoba. ^^

I have not considered a Leopold yet, i heard that their build quality was less than Filco, and didn't look much more into it. But if there is truth to that statement i may just return the Filco.