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complaining about $300 for a great keyboard is like complaining about a pricey bed. You use it for how many hours of the day if you're a programmer/engineer? Ma

• bloopernova 7y ago
  Precisely, although I don't think it's spoiling yourself. You use some things a whole lot that it makes sense to spend comparatively more on them than you would on "normal" items: * Bed * Office chair * Keyboard and mouse * Monitors * Footwear * Cooking basics like a couple of knives and a pan or two. Perhaps this can explain it better than I will ever be able: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Econom... "At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars. Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet." Perhaps a modernized/realistic version would be "you can spend $200 on pizza ten times in a year, or you can spend the same on a couple of knives and second-hand stainless steel pans. At the end of the year, you may have some excess body fat depending on activity level, or some good useful cookware" (or something, I dunno, I'm never going to be as smart or eloquent as Terry Pratchett GNU)
  • detaro 7y ago
    Tbh, cheap(er) keyboards don't necessarily are unreliable and fall under that theory. I'm mildy interested in buying a fancy keyboard, but the Logitech I bought in highschool refuses to die...
    • twic 7y ago
      Your keyboard, like the AK-47 rifle and the UN26 bottom bracket, is an interesting exception to the Vimes theory. Cheap, unsophisticated, but virtually indestructible. I'm not sure if there's a common mechanism by which things like that come to be. Possibly that they are designed for customers who are buying in bulk for use by other people (cubicle drones, PBI, buyers of assembled bikes), and who have a vested interest in reliability.
      • detaro 7y ago
        Something I hadn't quite considered: a 2000-something Logitech is cheap by todays standards, but back then Logitech was covered the range from affordable to high-end (Gaming keyboards with screens for maybe ~$100-130?), probably didn't make much really cheap ones, and likely didn't want to skimp to much on the cheaper models and ruin their reputation for the expensive ones. They weren't cheap enough for the effect to "trigger".
    • sjy 7y ago
      Yep. I got pretty into keyboards this year and ended up spending over $500 and probably 50 hours on research, key switches, key caps, soldering, firmware programming, and learning Colemak and ortholinear layouts. I enjoyed the process, but it would be pretty difficult to argue that it was a worthwhile investment on purely pragmatic grounds. When you spend $200 on a keyboard, you’re inclined to spend hours fixing it when there are problems (which every custom-built keyboard has) rather than just dropping $20 on a new one. I’m not getting any of that time back and I’m not any faster at typing.
  • peterburkimsher 7y ago
    Your list of "Bed, Office chair, Keyboard and mouse, Monitors, Cooking basics like ... a pan or two." (all except footwear) aligns very well with my list of "things that don't fit on a plane". Unfortunately my life isn't stable enough to invest in something that I can't carry with me when I have to move. It's luxuries like these that I've often had to go without entirely (having a chair and desk is so nice compared to using a laptop on a mat on the floor). If immigration were easier, I'd have already settled down, but instead it's been 8 years and counting living like this. I really hope my pending resident visa application comes through this time, so I can start investing in things like those.
    • Aeolun 7y ago
      They do, however, fit in a shipping container. By the time you paid for all of these things, shipping them is a lot cheaper than buying them all again.
      • peterburkimsher 7y ago
        Shipping takes several months, and assumes I know the address in the destination before I set off. By the time a shipping container would arrive, I'd already have been there for 90 days, and need to leave again.
        • Aeolun 7y ago
          Ah, yeah, if you move every 90 days it may be a bit harder. I was thinking more about 1-2 yearish span.
          • grogenaut 7y ago
            actually every 90 days is perfect, get 2 sets of things and keep shipping them slow.
            • OJFord 7y ago
              Except the commenter says even the next destination is unknown when leaving the last, nevermind the following one.
  • blaser-waffle 7y ago
    The conventional wisdom on reddit is essentially the same things you listed, sans pots and pans: "spend money on things that go between you and the ground" aka tires, beds, chairs, footwear, cushions, etc.
• benibela 7y ago
  And if you do not find a cheap bed, you can build your own bed I have built my bed frame from soda cans and wooden slats I found on the street
• Osiris 7y ago
  For me the hesitation is that it's a lot of money for something I don't know if I'm going to like it or if it's going to make me more productive. It's an expensive experiment, especially considering the vast variety of different styles, layouts, pressure sensitivity, etc, etc.
  • tracker1 7y ago
    It's one of those situations where a store front or a friend with the item you're considering helps a lot. My favorite keyboard ever was a Model-M buckling spring keyboard... one year I broke a retainer clip for the spacebar while taking the key caps off to clean it... I decided to toss it, it was probably close to a decade old at that point. After that for about another decade, I bought a new keyboard each year, often anywhere from $20-50, and it was always disappointing... I'd put up with it for the better part of a year and move on. I'd tried several of the more popular mechanical keyboards, never quite the same. I then found Unicomp was still making them... though not exactly the same, still really nice imho. I use one of the 103 key models at home. I've since switch to a cherry mx brown das keyboard at work to spare my coworkers the noise. In the end, the $120 or so I spent for a keyboard that's lasted me years is far better than one I've swapped out at least once a year. I'd probably consider it if I had any signs of RSA or actually liked split keyboards at all. Ironically, moving to a mechanical keyboard with a tactile feel, the RSA symptoms I did have have since gone away. I've still tried several other KBs and styles since then, my only suggestion is stay away from mechanical keyboards under around $80 as they're often knockoff switches that are not as good and don't feel the same.
    • C1sc0cat 7y ago
      I have a Type M that I really must get a usb adaptor sorted out for. The Type M is the original IBM PC keyboard even better than the type F AT keyboards.
      • wyclif 7y ago
        I have a Unicomp (which is based on the IBM Model M) Sun Unix Spacesaver USB keyboard: https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/40PSA https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/40PSA It's great, and what's not to love if you're a POSIX guy? The Ctrl and Caps Lock keys are swapped, so the Ctrl key is on the home row like God intended. It has buckling spring, positive keyclick action and it's so good if you do a lot of keyboard input or use Vim and/or Emacs. The bottom plate is steel and it's heavy, it won't slide around on my desk. Sure, for custom mechanical keyboard snobs, the keycaps aren't anything to write home about because sometimes the key characters aren't properly centered on the key surface. But my keycaps look OK, maybe I just happened to get a good one. And it doesn't bother me anyway because I never look at the keys when typing.
• rumanator 7y ago
  > complaining about $300 for a great keyboard is like complaining about a pricey bed. except it isn't a great keyboard when compared with standard keyboards, and its value proposition is absurd when taken into account that standard keyboards cost around 10€ and ergonomic keyboards by reference brands such as Microsoft go for about 50€.
  • MrMorden 7y ago
    I've used the €50 keyboard; it's certainly better than the €5 keyboard (at retail) that ships with most desktops, but it's still not anywhere near as good as a Kinesis or Maltron, the cost of either is less than 1‰ (so a rounding error of a rounding error) of the cost of employing me for a year, and they'll last longer than the five-year depreciation period for office equipment.
    • clarry 7y ago
      Yep. I've used a Kinesis Advantage Pro for some 10-15 years. I used Microsoft Natural Ergonomic for a year or two but it's not comparable. One can easily spend more in coffee over a few months than it costs to buy one of these somewhat better keyboards.
      • rumanator 7y ago
        The kinesis keyboard costs more than some low-end laptops. It's hard to sell the idea that it's ok for a keyboard to cost more than a regular everyday work computer, even if it's price is expressed in coffee cups.
        • clarry 7y ago
          On the other hand, it will outlast many mass-produced low-end laptops made of the cheapest of components. Mine is still going strong after more than a decade. Also, these 300 eur laptops are not something I'd consider for everyday work. Way underspecced for a lot of stuff, and generally miserable to work with or carry around.
        • 7y ago
• gambiting 7y ago
  It's the same as spending $10k on a mattress - it's just dumb. Yes you spend a lot of time in it, but after a certain point you're spending money to feed someone's marketing, not paying for any tangible benefit.
  • Aeolun 7y ago
    That might be true for $2000 keyboards, but not for $300 ones.
    • im3w1l 7y ago
      Do you have objective data?
      • martopix 7y ago
        Do you?
        • im3w1l 7y ago
          I never get the more expensive product unless it's obviously or provably better. Baseline assumption is that quality is the same and they just want more money.
      • Aeolun 7y ago
        Unfortunately, no. This is just based on my top of the head ‘when does the cost exceed the cost of labor and materials’ estimate.
• overcast 7y ago
  Except the bed is contributing to spine health, what is a plain non-ergonomic keyboard contributing to? Carpal Tunnel?
  • sjy 7y ago
    I’ve always assumed that ergonomic beds and keyboards were equal parts snake oil, once you get past the obviously terrible bargain basement stuff. Do you think there’s a meaningful difference?
    • Symbiote 7y ago
      €10 gets you the cheap keyboard which leads to bad wrist positions, which can contribute to RSI and carpal tunnel. €60-80 buys a mass-produced ergonomic design, like the Microsoft Ergonomic. These aren't adjustable or programmable, but it's easily a worthwhile improvement. (Personally, I bought a mechanical keyboard because I don't like the low-travel laptop-style keys that are now standard on the MS Ergonomic and other similar "cheap" ergonomic keyboards.) €100-150 buys a mass-produced, adjustable, reprogrammable (to some extent) keyboard, like a Kinesis Freestyle. This will help people with wrist issues, and will seem an obvious improvement to anyone who has a Microsoft Ergonomic. It also comes with mechanical keyswitches, which give more options in typing pressure. €300 buys a sculpted ergonomic keyboard, like the Kinesis Advantage2. I've never used them, but people who have had wrist problems seem to swear by them. They look comfortable to use, if you know how to touch-type in the standard way. Within this whole range are DIY and small-scale ergonomic keyboards. The price varies a lot depending whether it's self-assembled, self-printed/cut, etc (this obviously makes no difference to the effectiveness of the keyboard), the type of key switches chosen (this makes some difference, but will eventually lead to the kind of discussions one hears about 99.999999999% copper speaker cables where people are spending €2+ per switch) and the key caps (which is 99% appearance). All of them are fully programmable, and there's potentially a lot of customization possible for tilting, positioning and so on. The key switches and key caps are independent from whether the keyboard is ergonomic or not, so you can also spend €300+ on an extremely un-ergonomic keyboard with just 50 keys, a milled aluminium case, 8° tilt, no feet, €2 switches and incorrect Japanese key legends with colours taken from a manga. This should be considered art rather than a useful tool. Adding the €150 Japanese key caps to a €120 kit-built ergonomic keyboard doesn't make it worse, but mine looks good enough with the plain €15 key caps.
• deleted 7y ago
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• roel_v 7y ago
  It's not spoiling yourself! What tradesman would buy a 15$ no brand cordless drill that they'll use dozens of times a day? Yes the cheapest one will spin the drill bit when you push the button, just like one 10 or 30 times more expensive - but just the better ergonomics makes it worth it. One aspect of being a professional is using proper tools.
• APock 7y ago
  I work with senior developers all around me all day, most of them don't see a reason to spend more than $10 on a keyboard, and mock me constantly whenever I get a typo somewhere about my $150 daskeyboard.