I'm back with some long winded commentary regarding my recent purchase of a rosewill RK-9000 (Cherry MX Browns).
Original post for my ramblings about my old keyboard.
I was able to successfully replace my crappy desk's keyboard tray (well, flat piece of fiberboard) with a new custom cut peice of plywood so that it fits both the new keyboard and my trackball. As the old "tray" wasn't secured to the desk (makes a nifty lap board when I wanted to lean back in the chair this way), I ended up knocking it to the floor quite regularly. The new one has features that prevent this thankfully. If nothing else this purchase has forced me to improve this horrible desk.
I like this keyboard. Browns are perhaps a little light after my worn out ~140cn activation / 75cn holding force of the old frankenboard. I think something like a tactile black (swap black springs into a brown?) would have been a more comfortable fit and shallower learning curve for me.
It's very nice having a functional indicator light for caps-lock (my push to talk button for voice-chat during online gaming, long since dead on frankenboard).
The thread title's nitpick: the left alt and space bar are stupidly placed. I grew up on Macs, and prefer them when not gaming. Apple keyboards (at least since y2k) all basically align the right edge of the left Cmd key with the right edge of the X key. This means I had a shorter distance for my thumb to travel to the cmd key with frankenboard than to the alt key of the Rosewill.
On the Rosewill the alt key's right edge is about centered below the X key, while the narrowing of the key bottom to top pushes the top face of the Alt key closer to the 1/3 mark of the X key. My muscle-memory sends my thumb to directly below the X key when I want alt / cmd. On the Rosewill that corresponds precisely with the gap between alt and space >.<
A few quick google searches make me believe this is common on pc keyboards. WTF. The space key does NOT need to extend beyond the left of C and the right of M in my biased opinion.
About that keycap narrowing: while the base of these keycaps are roughly the same size as on frankenboard, the top faces are significantly smaller. This I can forgive - it was weird at first but I've learned to be more precise in finger position when typing. The Alt key being too far to the left IS a hassle however.
SIGH - time to research more mechanical keyboards with this new nugget of decision making information in mind. Although I'm tempted to rip the keys / controller out of this keyboard and make a custom one someday to not have to mess with finding the Right Keyboard (tm).
For now - it works. I doubt I could consider going back to non mechanical keys any time soon. Nitpicks aside this thing is rather fun for typing / gaming.
ALSO: My apologies for the thread name. I just watched Buckaroo Bonzai for the first time at a coworkers insistence and now have several choice quotes bouncing around in my head ;-)
