A little recap and then a followup for those who might be interested.
I bought a Razer Black Widow when it was on sale because I've wanted a mechanical keyboard for a while, and thought that the Black Widow would be a good introductory model - less than half the price of some of the more respected makes.
I didn't like it. The keys felt wrong. Initially I thought that the issue was that the keys were 'narrow'. It felt that way, my fingers kept getting stuck in the gaps between keys and I kept hitting Caps Lock instead of the A key.
I thought maybe I had been spoiled by having a low profile keyboard with very wide keycaps, but I also knew that I'd never had such a problem with a keyboard in the past... and I've used also sorts of keyboards in my time.
A brief discussion here put me right: the keycaps and spacing are pretty much standard, so whatever the problem was, it wasn't likely to be that.
So I went back to the drawing board. Kept looking at prices. A lot of the cheaper mechanical keyboards are gaming boards, and they all seem to be using Red or Black switches these days, but I wanted Blues. I do love to game, but typing is more important to me.
Long story short, I picked up a Q-pad MK-80 when I spotted it on sale. Rumour has it that this is a clone of the iOne Xarmor board. A bit of research on geekhack suggests that it's not widely respected for build quality, but the price was decent and I figured it would probably be a good second bite at the cherry.
Well, I've had it for a fortnight now, and I love it. There was no 'adjustment time' required. It's a keyboard, and I was able to use it as one straight out of the box. I still don't know what the deal was with that Razer Black Widow, but something just wasn't right.
I'm typing as faster or faster than I ever have, and the feeling of doing so is more satisfying than ever. I particularly like the slightly rubberised, silky feeling of the keys. It's just an absolute pleasure to use. It's like firm velvet or something. The included wrist rest has the same coating, and it's just so comfortable to use.
So, having had a Razer that very nearly put me off mechanical keyboards altogether, I'm now on another 'entry level' board, but this one is superb. It has backlighting as well, which wasn't important to me in my decision, but it's a nice little bonus. I keep it off a lot of the time, though.
It's nice to have a little overhead to upgrade one day, if I feel the urge to do so. And if this board dies, I'm pretty confident that I'll replace it with another mechanical board, which was not something that I was entirely sure of, after the Razer.
But for now, I'm sold on this one.