21–28 of 28 posts
Experience shows that switching between layouts is not appealing for most.
Topre switches are the best ever, and they get no love in the fervent mechanical keyboard community. It's just "cherry cherry cherry" ad nauseum with the occasional model-m imitator like the ones in this article. Do yourself a favor and get a Realforce keyboard. It's typing nirvana.
>Topre switches are the best ever Do you know of a decently built and split design keyboard that uses them? A quick googling didn't show anything. I'd be willing to give it a shot but I'm not going back to a one piece keyboard for anything.
One thing I rarely see discussed in any detail in mechanical keyboard roundups is a noise comparison. For a tool for "coders", many mechanical keyboards can be pretty disruptive to your coworkers if you're using it in a workspace without a closed door. My favorite switches for typing (and thus, coding) are MX blues. Unfortunately these are also the loudest, with a distinct click at each key activation. You can purcha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Topre switches are the best ever Do you know of a decently built and split design keyboard that uses them? A quick googling didn't show anything. I'd be willing to give it a shot but I'm not going back to a one piece keyboard for anything.
I've never seen one unfortunately. I suspect they exist but maybe aren't easily found on english websites.
Anyone got any favourites?
One thing I rarely see discussed in any detail in mechanical keyboard roundups is a noise comparison. For a tool for "coders", many mechanical keyboards can be pretty disruptive to your coworkers if you're using it in a workspace without a closed door. My favorite switches for typing (and thus, coding) are MX blues. Unfortunately these are also the loudest, with a distinct click at each key activation. You can purcha…
Cherry MX come in a spectrum on both tactile and auditory (clicky) feedback. MX Blues are tactile and clicky. If you want tactile, but not clicky, then you would want an MX Brown. You can feel when the actuation happens, and as long as you don't bottom out the keys, they are silent. Many DasKeyboard models come with a choice of Blue/Brown, but other manufacturers have them as well. Here is a site that has an explanat…
Edit: another thing that helps is having the keyboard on a oversized mousepad, to dampen the vibrations from keyboard -> desk
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Topre switches are the best ever Do you know of a decently built and split design keyboard that uses them? A quick googling didn't show anything. I'd be willing to give it a shot but I'm not going back to a one piece keyboard for anything.
Offtopic(ish), but do you mean like the MS ergonomic keyboard split-but-one-piece, or actually two separate pieces? If the latter, what do you like about them?
The MS ergo keyboard isn't wide enough for me but I'm not against a one-piece design. I just recently switched to a Kinesis Advantage2 (split-but-one-piece) at home but I have a straight two-piece keyboard at work. The width I keep the two-piece at is a bit wider than the Advantage but it's not enough to bother me.
>If the latter, what do you like about them?
The main issue for me is that I'm 6'6" and have broad shoulders. Normal keyboard layouts cause me to roll my shoulders dramatically so I can get my hands on the home keys. This caused some shoulder pain issues in the past when I had code-heavy weeks. Split configuration seems to have fixed that completely.