my two choices...

[yester64]

Hi, i was reading this wiki and forum for a while and i find it quiet interesting since i am looking for a good keyboard myself.

Right now i have a (free) Logitech K350 keyboard and yes it was free and for free its ok. But the keys are quiet bad. Sometimes you hit the key and it does not respond or you can't press it down since it hangs.

Anyway, i was looking into two keyboards that i found on the forum. I used to have a old cherry mechanical keyboard a long time ago. So i am familiar with the noise level a little.

The onces i am interested are the Customizer, the Rosewill Mechanical Keyboard RK-9000BR with Cherry MX Brown Switch. There was also a Ducky keyboard with green alps mechanics, but i could not get any information on it.
What i like to know is, which will serve me better for 'normal' operation like writing, gaming etc...
Perhaps there is no answer to this. Are any of these more quieter?
The customizer seems to be the one that is very robust and will last a long time.
Sadly, i can not test these keyboards out anywhere so it will be buy in the blue. I just want to make sure i get the right keyboard.

I understand that everyone has a favorite keyboard, or favors a particular mechanics. So there may be nothing standing out to another.

Thanks

[slueth]

They all seem good.  The Customizer doesn't have nkro, but I play games just fine on it.  The feel of the Customizer is better, but thats because I prefer buckling to brown switches.
The Customizer is louder.

[yester64]

They all seem good.  The Customizer doesn't have nkro, but I play games just fine on it.  The feel of the Customizer is better, but thats because I prefer buckling to brown switches.
The Customizer is louder.

Mm.. do you need this nkro? I checked and it says for pressing simultaneously key combination. Not sure what it means really. You still can press ALT-CTRL-F4 or?

[Deadly55]

6kro  for example means you can hit 6 keys and it will do all of them nkro means you can hit every key on the keyboard and it'll go through. my widow has 2kro with a gaming optimized matrix but i'm a lefty gamer so i have some issues using okl; as my gaming keys, because some of the  combos are simply exceeding the 2kro.

[fossala]

it is 2kro minimum and that is not including modifiers (ctrl, alt, meta).

[Tony]

There is no right or ideal keyboard for everyone. Most of us geekhackers become keyboard collectors after buying 10 different keyboards.

Customizer is much louder and heavier to type than the Rosewill brown. I recommend the Rosewill.

[daerid]

Be wary of Rosewill's longevity tho, apparently they've had a few issues come up recently with the keys double pressing randomly and boards dying and such.

You can also look into WASD Keyboards

[Armando Penblade]

Be wary of Rosewill's longevity tho, apparently they've had a few issues come up recently with the keys double pressing randomly and boards dying and such.

You can also look into WASD Keyboards

Please take this with a grain of salt. Literally any Cherry MX-based keyboard can come down with "chatter." It is ubiquitous across all brands and manufacturers. It is one of the main reasons why making sure you buy a keyboard with a decent warranty is so helpful--if your super cheap imported Chinese board develops chatter on three keys a month in, good luck getting your import dealer to swap it out for you. On the other hand, Rosewill/Das/WASD/SteelSeries all offer English-language based support and decent warranties.

[False_Dmitry_II]

If you want something that might double as a weapon in the zombie apocalypse, get the unicomp.

[yester64]

I got me a Rosewill Cherry brown keyboard. So far i like it. But i think i would take next time red switches. What i don't like about the brown switches is that there is no point of contact. You can press it slowly down and it will print the letter before hitting the bottom.
Still it is a major upgrade to my rubber dome keyboard and i think it was worth the purchase.

But on the other hand i can not have a very loud keyboard either. So its fine for me and i am happy. It is, however, a good keyboard to get started in the mechanical land of joy.

[alaricljs]

Erm, all Cherry MX switches activate at 2mm and hit bottom at 4mm... You should be able to feel the slight hitch in the brown that is the tactility point.  The red has no tactility, it's 4mm worth of smooth sliding, and the switch ticks over at 2mm just like all the rest of them.

[yester64]

Erm, all Cherry MX switches activate at 2mm and hit bottom at 4mm... You should be able to feel the slight hitch in the brown that is the tactility point.  The red has no tactility, it's 4mm worth of smooth sliding, and the switch ticks over at 2mm just like all the rest of them.

That means that i rather need a blue? I have to admit that i still struggle with the technique. I think it would boil down to press & click to me. But like i said, i am happy with the keyboard and it does the job well. Just need some new fingers since mine are so bad.

[daniel0731ex]

The perfect keyboard for me would be a tenkeyless, NKRO over PS/2, 1000Hz USB, capacitive, buckling spring keyboard in all-black.

[yester64]

The perfect keyboard for me would be a tenkeyless, NKRO over PS/2, 1000Hz USB, capacitive, buckling spring keyboard in all-black.

Like i said, i like the keyboard. I had this wireless Logitech keyboard which was ok but rubber dome. This keyboard gives me a feel that i am 'hacking' the key.

Btw. which switch would be a natural upgrade from the brown switches?

[daniel0731ex]

Personally I dislike the brown switch; I think they're half-assed compared to blues or reds.

Compared to blues, the tactile bump is too subtle to be noticed when typing normally. Heck, the tactility point does not even match up with the activation point; you still have a little distance go after the peak force before actually hitting the activation point. What's even weirder is that the reset point of the browns comes BEFORE the tactility point.
Blue switches are much more precise -- the tactile bump guarentees activation, and the rest point is AFTER the upward bump.

Compared to linear switches, the bump of the browns simply gets in the way of repeated keystrokes. On the blues, you could actually feel the reset point (and it actually passes the upward bump faster than browns because of the loose slider), while on linear switches the muscle memory is quite easy to develop. But for browns, since the reset point is somewhere like halfway through the bump, it is quite difficult not to pass thorugh it all the way. Thus you need very, very precise control in order to double-tap as fast as linear or even blues.


Buckling springs are the best.

[omuerte]

I've got a rosewill brown and I'm really happy with it. I also picked up a filco tenkeyless with browns because I'm running out of desk space, equally happy with both boards. Get in on the 40a o-ring group buy if you're new to mechanical keyboards, they make the typing experience a lot smoother until you learn not to bottom out all your keystrokes.

edit: One thing about the rosewill that bugs me - the keys fade *really fast.*  I ended up buying some blank keys from WASD to replace my enter/tab/capslock/shifts/lctrl because I'd managed to wear them down in about a month of use. The same thing is happening more slowly to the letter keys.

[yester64]

Personally I dislike the brown switch; I think they're half-assed compared to blues or reds.

Compared to blues, the tactile bump is too subtle to be noticed when typing normally. Heck, the tactility point does not even match up with the activation point; you still have a little distance go after the peak force before actually hitting the activation point. What's even weirder is that the reset point of the browns comes BEFORE the tactility point.
Blue switches are much more precise -- the tactile bump guarentees activation, and the rest point is AFTER the upward bump.

Compared to linear switches, the bump of the browns simply gets in the way of repeated keystrokes. On the blues, you could actually feel the reset point (and it actually passes the upward bump faster than browns because of the loose slider), while on linear switches the muscle memory is quite easy to develop. But for browns, since the reset point is somewhere like halfway through the bump, it is quite difficult not to pass thorugh it all the way. Thus you need very, very precise control in order to double-tap as fast as linear or even blues.


Buckling springs are the best.

It may be. I heard that the browns are a good compromise. So far i find them really good. Although sometimes my fingertips  hurt.
But i wonder if you can use the blue for gaming. Most i have read is that it is not great for gaming and more for typing.