This post (apparently from a CM employee) would seem to confirm that the Pro is iOne. I wonder if it's too late to cancel my order...
I've decided to be a little risky and not cancel my order. DAS won't ship to Canada, so the student discount's no help there, and the TKL alternatives readily available to me (PLU-87, CM GF Rapid, even the SMK-88 if I wasn't sure my wife would murder me over the Cherry Blues), their drawbacks aside, would have been a minimum of 30% more expensive even before I found a separate keypad.
On top of that, after doing a little admittedly optimistic reading, particularly in and around the post linked above, it seems as though CM is willing to put in the effort to maintain a high level of QC no matter who their OEM is.
i wouldnt call it a downgrade, but yes, we switched to iOne...
i dont know why costar is supposed to be so great, we had a lot of headaches with them and had to go back and forth with small quality quirks...
from my experience in working with different fabs, id say costar is average, maybe slightly above average... they "forgot" to add grease to the balance levers of the spacebar and backspace and enter keys on some batches of the quickfire series, which resulted in squeeky sounds... i mean come on... we had to send them all back... and that wasnt the only thing...
Now, leaving aside the fact that this is, after all, an employee justifying an unpopular decision to the public, I think there are reasons for optimism. If CM is willing to send back whole batches for what would, to most companies, be dismissed as minor problems, it may not matter who the manufacturer is: if they insist on quality, they'll get it.
I know I'm in the minority in my willingness to overlook iOne's designs (especially the QF Pro), but from my goaltending background, I'm comfortable with the idea that one generally has to pay a premium to get something unbranded; it's something I can overlook if I have to.
