I'm a software dev, and I've always been trying different keyboards, but somehow other than ye olde buckling springs of legend I never heard much or got into the mechanical thing.
As I've gotten older, I've found the space between the keyboard and mouse (well, I use a trackpad now, but same diff) to be more and more of a problem. To that end, I have been using a HHKB for the last couple of years, and I really like it. But I never took the time to explore any of the other switches.
Recently I picked up a Leopold blue tenkeyless, but I find it's still a bit too big, so I think I'll be trying the KBT RACE and Noppoo Choc Mini next. I did find that I like having the variety of these other keys, though. And, honestly, I would love to find a keyboard that I feel like I can have several copies of without shelling out HHKB levels of cash.
On the religious wars front, I use emacs constantly, I always rebind control to the traditional caps lock location, and I use almost exclusively mac hardware, though not always running Mac OS. Oh, and I tend to use real dashes — and “quotation marks” and other annoying stuff like that. I used to have all the ASCII key codes memorized when you had to hold down ALT and punch them on the numpad to get into my BBS posts on my 1200 baud modem.
I try to do everything possible from the keyboard. I'm always setting up elaborate hotkey chords to avoid ever reaching for a pointing device. For a while I was trying to use a Kinesis Freestyle, but I kept finding bugs in their key rollover and ended up taking it back.
Glad to be here. Hope I don't burn to much cash on this new hobby. :-)
