Speaking of mechanical keyboards, funny story: my 85 year-old dad had this OOOOLD cheapo rubber-dome Belkin keyboard whose keys had stiffened to the point where the thing was a crime against humanity. My mom had rescued an old IBM Model M buckling spring keyboard from an old employer when they were going to throw a bunch of them out, and she just had it lying around. Well, I’d given my dad my 2010-vintage Windows 7 laptop with SSD but he had this abomination of a Belkin keyboard hooked up to it. I got them a PS/2 to USB adapter (ironically from Belkin), they hooked up the Model M and now he’s typing (noisily) away. The thing is probably 30 years old and still works fine. Crazy eh?
Buckling spring is like the epitome of mech keyboards! Your dad’s hands are saved! Rejoice…
Yes, it is the epitome of noisy keyboards.
Signature Plastics has the Dolch colorway (very dark grey + grey) in the DSA profile (low profile, uniform heights, same as the Macross set posted earlier) available for sale right now. This is a very highly sought after colorway, so order asap if you are interested.
Be sure to check out the additional related items (numpad set, gamer keys, windowed caps) shown at the bottom of the page.
http://keyshop.pimpmykeyboard.com/products/full-keysets/dsa-dolch-set-base-set-110-total-keys
I should be playing more games instead of admiring keyboards. Lol.
The only game I play now is Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 4 in a Win95 virtual machine just so that I can simultaneously appreciate my Filco :D
I can’t believe you are telling me this. If I gotta play a game in typing, I’ll play Typing of the Dead. At least that’s a game :p and it has zombies!
Metal caps aside… EK is offering preorders for a tenkeyless from a new company called KUL–see here (http://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=keyed_up_labs,tenkeyless). Clear, brown, and red switches. Anybody heard of these guys before? Based in SoCal instead of Japan, so perhaps warranty issues might be easier to deal with… (I’m ever the optimist!)
If you love mechanical keyboard and you’d like a vintage typewriter style setup, there’s a new Kickstarter to build the ultimate vintage typewriter keyboard.
Weellll… NCIX in Canada is now selling Topre keyboards: $190 CAD with free shipping for the Topre SE17T0, the cheapest I’ve ever seen it here in Canadaland. This might be old news, but it’s the deepest discount I’ve ever seen on this particular tenkeyless. Gah. Right before the Steam summer sale, too. My wallet’s going to kill me.
Amazon recently picked up the Topre Type Heaven (the “low-end” Topre). Work simultaneously started bugging me because someone felt guilty about me using my own fancy keyboard there. . . so I think they’re gonna buy me a keyboard of my choice to replace? Thinking of going that route, personally. Of course, it’s the organization’s to keep, not mine, but c’est le vie :)
I say go for it. Topre feels great! And you will never look back at MX switches again!
One of the reasons that I ordered the Topre was because I was dealing with a lot of chatter issues with my Filco Tenkeyless, blue switch. I sent it back once to have it repaired, and it still had issues a couple of years later. When I saw the deal on NCIX, I leaped on it.
It’s hard to explain exactly how much more I’m enjoying typing with Topre switches as opposed to MX Blues. The sound is gentler, a lot more muted, and at the same time it feels just as solid as the MX switches. I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying using this as opposed to the blues. If I had known how great these switches were… and no chattering! The design makes this impossible!
Is this thread dead? I am sure someone is thinking of mechanical keyboards in the last two months! Let’s discuss!!
Work just ordered me this because some of them felt guilty over me bringing my own mechanical in and money existed for it.
I’m not gonna question that logic, but I am definitely gonna enjoy getting to feel Topre magic at long last :-D
That is very nice of work, Armando! Congrats. I hope you will like it. Some say, you gotta let it break-in a bit - spend a week on the keyboard before you conclude if you like it or not. But, Type Heaven is not the representation of what Topre has to offer. There is debate going on that the HHKB is different feeling than a Leopold FC660C which is different from a RealForce. Even Topre has different feel. Strange but true!
Well, got the Type Heaven in this afternoon at work. A few early thoughts.
The rubber “feet” on the bottom-back of the keyboard are tiny. Previously, due to several reasons (small desk, big laptop + docking station + three monitors), I had my Filco keyboard propped partially up on the laptop itself, with my Grifiti wrist rest underneath, to keep the computer screens as close to me as possible while still having room for the keyboard + wrist rest. However, the tiny little rubber feat on the Type Heaven don’t quite “reach” at that steep of an angle (probably close to 30 degrees), so the board slid around a lot. I’ve sense moved the laptop/docking station/monitors array back about 4 inches to give everything closer to me room to sit flat.
That’s my only real complaint about it, though! The construction feels nice and solid, with a good, but not unmanageable, heft to the board. You can tell it’s got a metal plate in there, but it’s not goofy like an all-aluminum body. While you sacrifice the fancier plastic of the Realforce keyboards, I find that the smooth, matte surface of the Type Heaven is perfectly pleasant to look at and touch, and doesn’t seem like it has undue amounts of flex in use or carrying.
The keys themselves are “only” ABS plastic, but have a slightly grippy, “sticky” coating that makes typing easy without necessarily appearing rough and unfinished like some other finishes I’ve seen. I’m curious to see if this coating (if it is a coating) will prove a point of failure, like the rubberized exteriors on the keys of the original BlackWidow Ultimate (which wore through with use, allowing LED light to spill through messily). Assuming it’s durable, though, I love it. The letters are big and bold for a clean appearance, but their coloration (dull gold, it looks like in my office light) isn’t ostentatious. There’s good contrast with the dark grey of the keys, but they don’t blare out. While there’s moderate wobble on the keys, it’s no more than I’ve seen on my Filcos or the SteelSeries 6Gv2, and it doesn’t seem noticeable during actual typing. Rather, I think it’s a function of the higher stems/longer travel distance of mechanical keyboards. You can’t have that much vertical space to move along and not fit so tightly as to be stiff without having a smidgen of wobble!
The typing experience is definitely different than the MX Browns, Blacks, and Blues I’ve used extensively. There’s a tactility to it, yes, but it doesn’t “pop” at a noticeable point like MX Browns or Blues would, but the travel isn’t as smooth and uninterrupted as the MX Blacks. There’s no click at all, just the soft thock or tick of bottoming out (The keys are a little too lightly weighted for me to avoid bottoming out routinely–I’m a heavy typist–but the sound is quieter than even my MX Browns on my second Filco are). If I take care and don’t bottom out, the key action itself is virtually silent, although there’s a faintly noticeable “pop” as the key springs back up. The weighting isn’t really too extreme in either direction, although either the design of the space bar (e.g., angle relative to my hands) or its weighting have me not quite pressing it hard enough to trigger every so often–perhaps in about 5% of cases that I go for it now. I “miss” other keys about 2% of the time right now, so I suspect its weighting is a little heavier than the MX Browns or the actuation point is a little lower, but both of these things are “problems dealt with by experience”–as I develop the muscle memory to interact with this keyboard in an optimal fashion, I’ll stop missing keys and not really feel like I’m typing harder or softer than before (I assume that the 45g on the Type Heaven won’t “tire out” my fingers nearly as bad as the weighty MX Blacks on my old SteelSeries).
Of course, the best part is that the device is free, which of course I’m a big fan of. I’ll have to find something to do with my white Filco w/ MX Browns, as I’ve already got the blue Filco w/ MX Blues setup at home. I may use the white as my “traveling keyboard,” but of course, since it’s full-sized, that’s a little unmanageable, which makes me want to buy a tenkeyless or even a smaller board, but ugh, money doesn’t really exist right now. So perhaps for now, I’ll just try to get my girlfriend to finally cleaning the mess she’s made in the room that’s supposed to be her office so that she can set up shop in there, and I’ll give her the spare Filco to use when at the desk. She recently picked up a “big kid” job and is going back to school again in the Spring, so she’ll want the quiet, private place to work, I suspect.
Great review Armando. And I’m not sure you notice or not but Topre will grow on you as you use more and before you know it, you are assimilated. Ha ha! As for small rubber feet, the same is true on a HHKB and a RealForce. It’s like they are trying to cut cost or something. Puzzling!!
And I picked up my first mechanical keyboard:
- Tried a few different ones and liked Cherry mx brown the best.
- o-rings make it nice and quiet which I prefer. Though it does feel a bit mushier I guess.
- Man this thing is heavy.
- Cheaper and locally available. Only $105 at best buy so if I don’t like it back it goes. I was eyeing the corsair rgb k70 but those aren’t even out in brown yet (just red).
- It actually works just fine with my usb linkskey 4 port kvm. I was really surprised by this. Macros work too on the gamer machine with the logitech software installed.
- Works fine with my macbook pro too through the KVM.
I hope the keys don’t break or the LED lights burn out but other than that I’m really happy with it. At least it has a 3 yr warranty. Hard to believe I’ve been using a membrane for the past 20+ years. I had no idea what I was missing out on.
One of us, one of us. . .
I also quite love MX Browns, particularly for work where my clicky Blues just won’t do. Hope you enjoy the keyboard!