Ah, I see. I wish there were a way to try it out first. I had a chance to use a normal Das Keyboard today and it felt fantastic, but there’s just no way I can get away with it, I’m afraid. It’s a choice between one of the quieter kinds of mechanical keyboards or the crappy Dell keyboard I use now.
How about this: on a scale of one to ten, one being my giveaway Dell keyboard and ten being your Choc Mini with blues, how would you rate your favorite keyboard with browns?
I ordered a Choc Mini with Black switches today. I primarily game with the keyboard, so I’ll give those a whirl first. Zylon’s warning convinced me that Blacks are the safe bet.
If cash gets loose again, I’ll probably order one with browns for comparison.
Hopefully I’ll have success craigslisting the spare. My order was $115 through myObook.net. Just in case that helps anyone else as a reference.
Maybe a 7? But that makes browns sound worse than they are, especially considering that QT3 is the land of the 7-9 scale. I wouldn’t always pick blues over browns. It just depends on my mood.
Some people talk about their introduction to browns in almost religious terms, but it wasn’t like that for me. Initially, I didn’t really notice the difference between browns and rubber domes, and I wondered what the big deal was. It was only after using the browns for a while and then having to use a Dell that I noticed how heavy the key action was, or how mushy and crinkly it felt (the Dell, that is).
If I had to pick some wholly inadequate descriptive terms to characterize the feel of the various switch types, I’d say:
Rubber domes: crinkly, mushy
Cherry brown: light, somewhat chalky
Cherry blue: plasticky, snappy
Buckling spring: jarring, pingy
Hopefully that makes more sense to you than, say, typical oenophile language makes to me.
So, I realize that this has probably been answered in bits and pieces in this thread and in exact verbiage on a dedicated mechanical keyboard forum, but if I wanted clicky-clicky keys that weren’t absurdly loud (fairly loud is okay), but had a tactile clunkiness when depressed, what manner of switches would I want?
Cherry Blue = tactile & clicky (Das Keyboard, etc.)
Cherry Brown = tactile & quiet (Filco Majestouch, etc.)
I love love love my Unicomp. After a year of use, it still feels brand new.
The Das Keyboard “Silent” is Cherry Brown.
I should certainly hope so.
And now that I’ve delved into this deeply, I decided that I wanted to go to my local big box retailer to test out a Razer BlackWidow to hear the Cherry Blues and ensure the Missus wouldn’t mind them too much, then pick up either that, the Rosewill RK-9000, or a Filco Majestouch.
At which point I learned three things in one very disappointing day:
My local Best Buy doesn’t stock the Black Widow and has no plans to do so. They also will not let me do in-store pickup. The Rosewill RK-9000 is completely sold out on Newegg and Chief Value, and the status indicates it might not ever come back into stock. Finally, Filco manufacturer Diatec lost their deal with their primary US distributor, EliteKeyboard, making the only option for obtaining one expensive Taiwanese imports.
So I’m now sitting on my arse waiting for RK-9000s to reappear, EliteKeyboard to start selling their Majestouch-replacement, the Leopold, or for my wallet to grow enough to accomodate one of the Ducky 9008 specials from Overclock.net.
This is almost as frustrating as waiting for next-gen SSDs to show up. I just want to buy, man!
You can order a Das Keyboard for Cherry Blues, if you like. They have a decent return policy, as well.
It’s ever-so-slightly out of my price range. . . honestly, the old Filcos would have been, too, I think. The RK-9000 tops out at $100, while the Black Widow is at $80. I’m shooting more for entry-level-but-not-horrible-quality-control, so the iOne Scorpius M10 and the Adesso MKB125B are right out. The Das’s do like extremely nice, though :(
Calling cherry browns quiet is a bit of a stretch. Quiet compared to blues, sure. Still noticeably louder than the mushy crap most computers ship with now, though.
Armando, I saw this Cherry Blue mentioned on Arstechnica recently.
It apparently uses Cherry Blues (according to one Newegg review). Costs $76.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823166109
EDIT: Also, try using a booking agent like myobook.net. They came recommended by GeekHack.org, which has a really dedicated Mech Keyboard community. I picked up the keyboard I wanted for $110. My experience with OBook has been good so far, too.
I LOVE my Das Keyboard. It feels like sex under my fingers. But it is so loud everyone within earshot (i.e., my ZIP code) hates me when I type on it.
As a bonus, I switched it to Dvorak, so nobody else can use my computer when Das is plugged in.
I’m not exactly a clean freak (there is an abhorrent amount of dust behind my monitor right now), but everyone talks about how the glossy finish on the Das Model S’s is an utterly nastiness-magnet. Has that impaired your enjoyment of it?
I have Das Keyboard II. It has a bumpy matte finish. I left it untouched for about 8 months and it accumulated some dust, but nothing major.
Mechanical switch keyboards are one of those things I’ve never understood the love for. My favorite keyboard in the world is a $12 membrane switch el cheapo that Lite On makes.
You shut your whore mouth. ;-)
The new Model S has a high-gloss (we’re talking PS3/mirror levels here) finish. I’d really rather have a DK2 or DK3, but they’re exceptionally hard to find. . . much like most of my preferred models (Rosewill RK-9000, Filco Majestouch 104, non-OCN-branded Ducky 9008G2, etc.). The glossiness worries me, but if nothing opens up in the near future, I might just cave, drop the extra $30, and go for the Das. At least I know it will be well-made.