I’m writing first and foremost to thank all of you for the hard work you’ve done building this community, and also to give a little introduction to myself. I’ve been lurking for some time now, reading and observing. A longtime IRC acquaintance first turned me on to the site. He also linked me to Marco C’s “mechanical key switch keyboards demystified” article and video, as well as Manyak’s extensive “mechanical keyboard guide.” Both of these were extremely informative and essential in giving me the grounding I needed to fully appreciate the world I was about to enter.
Working in an academic data center environment has its perks. During a major clean-up effort, I rescued a large stack of Model Ms which were slated to be trashed. Unfortunately, most of them were horribly disgusting. I mean they had furry patches growing on them, sticky adhesive cushioning attached to the bottom, key caps that were so yellow they had begun to turn brown… you get the idea. However, from this pile came two gems: an 82G2383 and a 51G8572. The former still needed a proper cleaning job, but the latter (which apparently shipped with an RS/6000 many moons ago) was in absolutely pristine condition; so much so that if you shone a flashlight down onto it, you could see the clean black surface underneath without even a hint of crumbs or hairs. Both of these are now serving me well in the office.
The biggest problem with delving deeper into mechanical keyboards is that in most cases, you can’t try before you buy. And when you do buy, it’s usually quite a substantial investment for a sight-unseen purchase. I window-shopped at elitekeyboards.com and drooled over the Filcos and the topres (which my aforementioned IRC acquaintance swears by), but could never convince myself to pull the trigger without at least being able to try one first. At this point I decided to fund any purchases solely with the proceeds of selling old video games and DVDs I had lying around (protip: glyde.com!) So far, that restriction has allowed me to purchase an ABS M1, which I am now using at home. I had considered a Scorpius M10, mainly because I really wanted to try cherries (of ANY color), but all the widespread concerns about build quality led to me shying away. There are no such issues with my ABS M1. I am extremely happy with the purchase, especially since I only paid $50 including 3-day shipping. I’m still poking around the POS online retailers, chasing the elusive g80-3000lscrc-2, but the outlook is pretty bleak. Not to mention the uncertainty of what you’ll actually receive when you order that model number. Once I’ve built up enough funds I will likely go with a Filco tenkeyless… just need to decide if I want browns or blues.
In summation, thanks for all the great information, and please keep up the good work!
