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I think this article is written from the perspective of a satisficer- it sufficiently meets the requirements he cares about. This is the perspective of most con

I think this article is written from the perspective of a satisficer- it sufficiently meets the requirements he cares about. This is the perspective of most consumers for most of the goods we purchase. It's good to get a well-considered perspective from somebody that isn't deep into the "enthusiast" category of keyboard purchasers.

nickjj 7y ago
Author here, I would partially agree with that. I'm not going to mechanical keyboard conferences, lubing my key switches and I had no idea what a sound dampening o-ring was until I read the parent comment. I haven't gotten super into keyboards because I haven't been negatively effected enough for me to go down that rabbit hole of finding something top tier that covers everything I want to do in a better way with 0 compromises. For example, typing into a terminal with 50ms of input delay is a horrendous experience so that lead me down a path of researching, finding and writing about monitors and terminals with extremely low latency which I think is safe to say is enthusiast level. The same goes for audio equipment. I have a 3,000+ post comparing a few headphones, going as far as analyzing frequency ranges to help find the most neutral headphones so I can hear back my voice accurately while recording courses. And for mice, back in the day when I played games more seriously I would put custom teflon pads on the bottom of the mouse to make it glide more smoothly and consistently. But with keyboards. I am satisfied with a fairly low noise, tactile feeling keyboard that doesn't skip or double press keys so I can chug along at ~80 WPM as a non-home row typist. I'm sure there's better, but the pain just isn't there to go deeper down the hole.
- sleepybrett 7y ago
  I see the keyboard as my primary tool for my job. I researched that tool and found the optimal one for me. In no universe is a keyboard with that little keytravel optimal for anyone. I'm not even getting into mechanical/non-mechanical, ergonomic (in all the flavors) and typical staggered layout. That little keytravel leads to either 1) over-bottoming out, which over time is bad for your joints or 2) tons of missed keypresses. Also even better than those o-rings (which reduce keytravel) there are switches with built in dampeners in the sliders (one expensive example https://zealpc.net/products/zilents https://zealpc.net/products/zilents but really https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0490/7329/products/Zilent_vs_Brown.jpg?v=1516507136 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0490/7329/products/Zilent_... you can see the little sliver of white at the top and bottom of the slider thats a little 'rubber' bumper that dampens the bottom-out and snap back ('top-out') sound.) I didn't really fall down the hole until about 10 years into my career when I had my first brush with RSI, but that landed me into a Kinesis Advantage which took awhile to get up to speed on, but now I don't see myself going back for longer sessions.
kakwa_ 7y ago
The whole deal with mechanical keyboards feels to me a lot like putting too much emphasis on the rig without real justification. Sure extremely skilled people do need the extra performance in some circumstances, but chances are the rig is not used by extremely skilled. And have seen it in a lot of fields and I've actually been culpable of it: * competitive sailing: I've done quite a bit of dinghy sailing and regattas in my youth (Optimist, Laser, 420), I was always a bit frustrated because as I was not very good, I never had the best boat allocated. But in truth, as long as your dinghy is somewhat water tight and your set of sails are not blowing-up when a strong wind occurs, you are set, at least for a regional and even national level (one of my trainers actually won a national championship on a garbage dinghy that was laying around abandon in a parking lot). * music (guitar): I've spent countless hours on forums arguing about guitars, amps, effect pedals and things like that. Today I own a Fender Telecaster (Made in Japan, not a US one), a Les Paul Classic, two tubes amps (one I've built, the other I've repaired). All that is far in excess of my actual skills. And I've seen far worst than me, I've literally guitarists barely able to play (like not being able to play 4 cords in rhythm) with 5000$ guitars and 3000$ amps. * photography, I've seen people with 5000/6000$ (and more) worth of hardware (like Canon 7D or 5D + 2.8 80-200 IS USM + a few other lenses) not being able to frame correctly a picture. And personally, I'm far from good but I do own a second hand 5D (mark I) and a 17-40 L, and the best set of picture I've ever taken was with an old analog AE-1 with a 1.8 50mm lens that cost me 80 bucks during concert. * mechanical keyboard: I do own a few mechanical keyboards despite the fact I'm barely able to type without looking at my keys (and I've tried to learn several times to type correctly without success using klavaro), and having a very slow word per minutes. I spend more time reading and thinking than typing so in the end, it doesn't matter that much. Clearly, I'm not the worst at it, but I'm definitely culpable. That being said, having a nice and expensive rig do provide for more pleasure in a lot of cases (ex: between a 150$ and 1500$ you do feel a difference, the touch is not the same, the wood vibration are not same, etc), and it's completely OK to allow yourself these small pleasures. However, acknowledging these small pleasures as such is important, a cheap guitar is fine, a cheap camera is fine, a cheap keyboard is fine, etc, no need to be pedantic about it. In the end, it rarely matters that much. PS: cheap mechanical keyboards are actually kind of horrible, I've a 30/40$ one with MX browns copies, the thing is really annoying with key presses resulting in two or three letters being typed, shift+char not always working properly or sometimes a key press resulting in nothing.

nickjj 7y ago

Author here, I would partially agree with that. I'm not going to mechanical keyboard conferences, lubing my key switches and I had no idea what a sound dampening o-ring was until I read the parent comment. I haven't gotten super into keyboards because I haven't been negatively effected enough for me to go down that rabbit hole of finding something top tier that covers everything I want to do in a better way with 0 compromises. For example, typing into a terminal with 50ms of input delay is a horrendous experience so that lead me down a path of researching, finding and writing about monitors and terminals with extremely low latency which I think is safe to say is enthusiast level. The same goes for audio equipment. I have a 3,000+ post comparing a few headphones, going as far as analyzing frequency ranges to help find the most neutral headphones so I can hear back my voice accurately while recording courses. And for mice, back in the day when I played games more seriously I would put custom teflon pads on the bottom of the mouse to make it glide more smoothly and consistently. But with keyboards. I am satisfied with a fairly low noise, tactile feeling keyboard that doesn't skip or double press keys so I can chug along at ~80 WPM as a non-home row typist. I'm sure there's better, but the pain just isn't there to go deeper down the hole.

sleepybrett 7y ago
I see the keyboard as my primary tool for my job. I researched that tool and found the optimal one for me. In no universe is a keyboard with that little keytravel optimal for anyone. I'm not even getting into mechanical/non-mechanical, ergonomic (in all the flavors) and typical staggered layout. That little keytravel leads to either 1) over-bottoming out, which over time is bad for your joints or 2) tons of missed keypresses. Also even better than those o-rings (which reduce keytravel) there are switches with built in dampeners in the sliders (one expensive example https://zealpc.net/products/zilents https://zealpc.net/products/zilents but really https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0490/7329/products/Zilent_vs_Brown.jpg?v=1516507136 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0490/7329/products/Zilent_... you can see the little sliver of white at the top and bottom of the slider thats a little 'rubber' bumper that dampens the bottom-out and snap back ('top-out') sound.) I didn't really fall down the hole until about 10 years into my career when I had my first brush with RSI, but that landed me into a Kinesis Advantage which took awhile to get up to speed on, but now I don't see myself going back for longer sessions.

kakwa_ 7y ago

The whole deal with mechanical keyboards feels to me a lot like putting too much emphasis on the rig without real justification. Sure extremely skilled people do need the extra performance in some circumstances, but chances are the rig is not used by extremely skilled. And have seen it in a lot of fields and I've actually been culpable of it: * competitive sailing: I've done quite a bit of dinghy sailing and regattas in my youth (Optimist, Laser, 420), I was always a bit frustrated because as I was not very good, I never had the best boat allocated. But in truth, as long as your dinghy is somewhat water tight and your set of sails are not blowing-up when a strong wind occurs, you are set, at least for a regional and even national level (one of my trainers actually won a national championship on a garbage dinghy that was laying around abandon in a parking lot). * music (guitar): I've spent countless hours on forums arguing about guitars, amps, effect pedals and things like that. Today I own a Fender Telecaster (Made in Japan, not a US one), a Les Paul Classic, two tubes amps (one I've built, the other I've repaired). All that is far in excess of my actual skills. And I've seen far worst than me, I've literally guitarists barely able to play (like not being able to play 4 cords in rhythm) with 5000$ guitars and 3000$ amps. * photography, I've seen people with 5000/6000$ (and more) worth of hardware (like Canon 7D or 5D + 2.8 80-200 IS USM + a few other lenses) not being able to frame correctly a picture. And personally, I'm far from good but I do own a second hand 5D (mark I) and a 17-40 L, and the best set of picture I've ever taken was with an old analog AE-1 with a 1.8 50mm lens that cost me 80 bucks during concert. * mechanical keyboard: I do own a few mechanical keyboards despite the fact I'm barely able to type without looking at my keys (and I've tried to learn several times to type correctly without success using klavaro), and having a very slow word per minutes. I spend more time reading and thinking than typing so in the end, it doesn't matter that much. Clearly, I'm not the worst at it, but I'm definitely culpable. That being said, having a nice and expensive rig do provide for more pleasure in a lot of cases (ex: between a 150$ and 1500$ you do feel a difference, the touch is not the same, the wood vibration are not same, etc), and it's completely OK to allow yourself these small pleasures. However, acknowledging these small pleasures as such is important, a cheap guitar is fine, a cheap camera is fine, a cheap keyboard is fine, etc, no need to be pedantic about it. In the end, it rarely matters that much. PS: cheap mechanical keyboards are actually kind of horrible, I've a 30/40$ one with MX browns copies, the thing is really annoying with key presses resulting in two or three letters being typed, shift+char not always working properly or sometimes a key press resulting in nothing.