Not entirely sure yet, but I think I might be looking to trade my Kinesis Contoured Advantage Linear Force. It uses Cherry MX reds instead of the typical browns this keyboard comes with.
The reason why is because I slightly prefer having tactility but didn't know until I bought this as it was my first and only linear switch. I've had this keyboard for about 2 months now and it is very lightly used because school started just about when I got it and I've been using my laptop mostly since I bring it to school and have all my work on it. This is another reason I'm sort of interested in trading it: since I don't use my desktop too much and this is too big to carry around in my backpack to use with my laptop (since I do bring an external keyboard with me) it's mostly just sitting there on my desk.
This keyboard retails for $330 and I'd be looking to trade it for a Realforce because they are about the same price and I'm very curious to try one. I'd prefer a tenkeyless but would consider a fullsize. Either 45g uniform or variable weight would be fine, though I have a few questions about the variable weighting.
If somebody has this same keyboard in brown and is interested, I might also be somewhat interested in doing an exchange, but am a bit more hesitant because unless you are in Canada I don't really like the idea of spending a whole lot on shipping and importing just to change the switch, because I don't mind the reds that much, I just slightly prefer browns.
I don't have any pictures right now but I do have a video I took just two days ago of me typing on it since I had just bought a new webcam that I wanted to try out. It is pretty much brand new, with no shine or anything of the sort and I wager that if I put it side by side with one that was straight out of the box you couldn't tell them apart except for a little dust. I'll take some photos shortly assuming I don't have second thoughts and decide to just keep it. I'm sort of curious to see what offers turn up and that will probably help me decide.
[video=youtube;iXYNiOq8XoQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXYNiOq8XoQ[/video]
---
I'd just like to talk about the keyboard itself for those who are potentially interested, and if you have questions I'd be glad to answer them. I should probably just get around to writing my own review of it sometime.
In all honesty, this is incredibly comfortable to type on. Sometimes I do typing exercises on typeracer or keyhero for way longer than I should on a normal keyboard, like two hours straight and my wrist will start to hurt but then I can switch to this keyboard and it literally immediately feels better. The inclined hand position and grid layout are absolutely lovely and if you are use to having to reach all the way to backspace to fix mistakes, having backspace available on a thumb is fantastic. The higher up shift keys are also much more comfortable (personally I find this is the thing that causes my wrists to hurt most when typing on a normal keyboard) and having the hyphen on the extreme end of the keyboard is fantastic for those who are just looking to type. I can't count how many times I get frustrated hitting 0 or = instead of - when doing typing tests lol.
Some people are a little worried that they won't be able to learn the layout but personally I found it really easy to learn. After two days I could already type on it at about 75% of my full speed and, as you can see in the video, I can now type at the same speed on it as I do on normal keyboards.
The arrow keys take some getting use to but once you get the hang of them it's amazing to not have to move your hand over to an arrow cluster like you would have to do on a normal keyboard. The same thing is true on my Poker and now I love having arrows in the main cluster and prefer keyboards even smaller than tenkeyless!
One thing that seemed very inconvenient to me at first was using Ctrl+anything, but after I rebound caps lock to control which many people do anyways and which you can do with the keyboard's reprogramming feature, even that was awesome. The other thing is that this keyboard is not really good for gaming since the key heights are all different around WASD and I actually bring out another keyboard for the few times I do some gaming on my desktop, which just means that this one has seen even less use.
I'm studying computer science and in terms of a programmer my feeling about this keyboard is fairly neutral. Some people here have said that they hate it for programming and some say they love it for everything. I've used it for programming and I think it's fine but if you are hesitant then you might want to keep away. I also do part time work as a transcriptionist which involves far more writing than programming does and it's for things like this that this keyboard really shines: when you just have to use the alphabetical keys. If you want a hardware solution for Dvorak or Colemak this is also really handy too. If you do a heavy amount of gaming and don't want to have to switch keyboards back and forth then I would stay away from this.
Anyways, just curious to see what comes up. Not completely sure I want to get rid of this as when school ends I may get to use it more. Mostly I have a bit of an itch to try a Realforce I think and I can't justify having both this and that at the same time.
