I ordered a Filco with brown Cherry switches a few months ago, and I’m of mixed feelings about it. It’s undoubtedly a solid, tank-like keyboard. But–
The blue status LEDs have a laser-like intensity that will momentarily blind you if you look straight into them.
The key travel isn’t silent as with a rubber-dome keyboard. There’s a subtle chalky scraping noise as keys move up and down.
The tactile resistance point in the key travel doesn’t precisely match the activation point, instead preceding it by a small but detectable amount. This, combined with the relatively low activation force required, has resulted in an increased amount of accidental inputs from my WASD hand.
Cool story, bro. The RealForce isn’t loud at all, that’s why I have that one at work. The Filco browns are little louder than normal keyboards but nothing like the old IBM model M. Filco blues are practically typewriters.
Zylon, I think that subtle scraping on the Filco is actually one of the reasons I like it so much. Hard to say why, but I love the feel of that thing. Have you tried the RealForce keyboards? Sounds like they might be more your style.
Bad news - Looks like it’s 1980-something in here too (but without the awesome hair and shoulder pads)
Good news - I bet those long-throw clicky mechanical switches feel GREAT to use!
Getting a little worried because for the last few days, I’ve missed a few copies leading into pastes of wrong stuff, and monkeying around with it, I seem to have much better “luck” getting the copies to take if I use the right-side Ctrl key instead of the lefthand one when Ctrl-C’ing.
The Filco’s only 8 years old and cost me $150 or so at purchase; I’d be pretty depressed if a key was going out.
Then again, it still seems to work fine for stuff like word-by-word scrolling through text and for the actual pastes themselves, so it may just be Windows being fucky today (there’s other weird shit going on in the OS atm). Fingers very crossed :(
I think I finally found my last keyboard: The Cloud 9 C989. It’s a split mechanical keyboard. You can actually move the two pieces apart, but put together (where they’re held by magnets) it’s basically the same form factor as a Microsoft Ergo 4000, but with wonderful, clicky Cherry MX Blue keys. (They also offer Red and Brown for those who like a quieter tactile experience.)
The volume dial in the center is actually really convenient and doesn’t get in the way. Really, the only gripe I had was that the Fn key is where I’m used to the Windows key being, but they have a firmware version on their site that swaps Fn and Windows.
It’s a bit expensive, but still cheaper than the Kinesis. I never liked Kinesis as an option as I want a numeric keypad, and their keyboard doesn’t actually allow a connected configuration.
Plus, it has RGB backlighting, so you type faster.
My wife broke the keyboard tray on my desk again and this time messed up my keyboard. I grabbed a newer version of what I had previously the Hyper X alloy elite 2. It’s quite a mouthful.
They upgraded this years with these things called pudding keys. They let RGB light shine through better but are more subdued if that makes sense. They also “feel” unlike other keys. Hard to describe but I think I love them. I went with linear red caps this time which is a bit of a switch as well. Really solid keyboard.
