7 ms·
I was expecting to see 10s of keyboards as you'd see from most in r/MechanicalKeyboards and was disappointed to only find 5. Not an unhealthy relationship at a
by EtienneK 3y ago
I was expecting to see 10s of keyboards as you'd see from most in r/MechanicalKeyboards and was disappointed to only find 5.
Not an unhealthy relationship at all!
- coreyh14444 3y agoI was going to do the Crocodile Dundee "That's not a knife, this is a knife" routine on this one. Taeha Types, Glarses, Hipyo Tech, Switch and Click, et al, would like to have a word.
- coreyh14444 3y agoAnd I'm typing this on a fully custom, hand soldered, hand lubed, modded Maja V2 from KBDFans and MT3 keycaps from Drop. Easily costs more than all those boards in that post combined. And let's just say this is not my only keyboard.
- J_Shelby_J 3y agoIt’s a neat hobby! Honestly, all you really need is to lube the switches. That’s biggest benefit. A lubed mechanical switch, even the cheapest generic red, out performs anything off the shelf.
- coreyh14444 3y agoTotally agree. You can take a basic mechanical keyboard from Amazon with hot swap switches, lube them. Maybe do a basic tape mod (just put masking tape on the back of the PCB) and get like 85% of the benefit of a high end keyboard. This is what I've done for the rest of my family's keyboards.
- wellthisisgreat 3y agoWhat does the tape mod do?
- nickstinemates 3y agoImproves the sound, basically.
- Modified3019 3y agoI presume you use the blue painters masking tape? Normal masking tape tends to turn into either horrible goo or powder.
- w0m 3y agoGasket mount was the biggest difference to me outside of the initial mechanical switch. Now I have a number of mechanicals (i love, or did..) that I side-eye as they don't have that hearty damp at the end. :/ (i consistently work at 3 desks, only have gasket on one)
- rewmie 3y ago> It’s a neat hobby! The same can be said about heroin.
- hnreport 3y ago[flagged]
- taneq 3y agoYou can't just say that and not post build pics of keyboard. :D (A couple of Das Keyboards here and only one is even modified, but let's say I'm mechanical-curious. :P )
- coreyh14444 3y agohttps://photos.app.goo.gl/xesqNgwBmZcrss6P6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/xesqNgwBmZcrss6P6 I should do some better glamour shots to do it justice :)
- wussboy 3y agoI love this. I've spent countless hours and hundreds of dollars pursuing an "Ortholinear Ms Natural 4000 with Cherry MX Blues". Custom laser cut outs. Hand wire wrapped. Custom firmware. It was tons of fun. But at the end of the day, I keep coming back to my Ergodox. I'm just so used to it now after all these years I don't think I could give it up.
- wellthisisgreat 3y agoI tried all the profiles that existed up to 2021 or so, and MT3 is really the best keycap profile;
- Jackevansevo 3y agoI've stood staring down that rabbit hole many times, but then I look at my wallet and turn back.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoEvery few months I go to https://keymacs.com/ https://keymacs.com/ and ponder whether my life would be better without all that cash, but with that beauty in my life.
- Beijinger 3y ago[flagged]
- taneq 3y agoIt's like those articles on gaming addiction where they're like "Anthony (27) spends up to 8 hours a week playing an online game, and his parents are worried about him!"
- LeifCarrotson 3y agoMeanwhile, most respondents to this post use a keyboard daily for 8+ hours to do work that's valued extremely highly. Have you seen an auto mechanic's toolbox, or carpenter's tool crib? Using the wrong tool, or even one which is only a few percent less efficient than optimal, is a mistake.
- hnreport 3y ago[flagged]
- jseliger 3y agoI eventually wound up with Kinesis ergo keyboards and stopped being much "into" keyboards; they are a means to an end: https://jakeseliger.com/2011/07/17/further-thoughts-on-the-kinesis-advantage-unicomp-space-saver-and-das-keyboard-two-years-later https://jakeseliger.com/2011/07/17/further-thoughts-on-the-k.... Now I have an Advantage 3 with Box White switches, after admittedly talking to an Upgrade Keyboards key switch sommelier, which I admit somewhat undercuts my first sentence in this comment.
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago> key switch sommelier I genuinely hope this is someone's official job title somewhere.
- speed_spread 3y agoI'm imagining some fancy and twisted vilain's startup operation as in a 90's hacker movie. "How about some cherry mx blue and caviar while we take over the world?"
- philote 3y agoI love my Kinesis Advantage 2 keyboard, it's saved my hands/wrists. How's the 3 in comparison?
- dietsche 3y agoThe 3 is basically the same except you have real F keys and can upload settings to it via USB. Both are great keyboards. I’ve used them for well over a decade.
- sleepybrett 3y agoI went from 1's and 2's w/ custom controllers to a 360pro. It's largely the same board in terms of geometry. There are a few more keys, which are welcome, it's ZMK programmable (pro only). The writ wrests, extra, are better and don't seem to deform/wear out like the old ones. It's much less 'hollow', feels much more solid. The tenting is pretty awesome, the split is welcome. I would buy the pbt keys for extra $, the keys they ship are shit. I also pulled the DSA homerow from one of my advantages and used it here, they moved away from those special home row caps for cost reasons.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoI have bought at least twice as many keyboards as this dude - build 15 from scratch plus designed my own low profile hand wired dactyls - and I don’t have a problem.
- walteweiss 3y agoWould love to read your thoughts on that, if you’d ever be up to that.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoI’m not much of a writer. I do it mostly to optimize comfort while coding. I did think about posting some pics from my journey and my custom Zmk/qmk setup and key layout. But alas, there are many things to work on besides keyboards. But if there’s something specific you have in mind I can try to answer here.
- LeifCarrotson 3y agoPerhaps that's normal in the enthusiast communities you frequent, and perhaps it should be normal for members in a society as dependent on typing as modern humans, but you're definitely quite a few standard deviations away from the mean. Heck, in my engineering office (a bubble if there ever was one) there are only two other people who own more than one keyboard at home or know what a "mechanical" keyboard is, and most of us only have a couple 'special' keyboards. Most of my family and non-work friends have either one or zero, if you don't count on-screen keyboards on phones and tablets or integrated keyboards on laptops (which I don't think should count).
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoYeah, it was a bit tongue in cheek. The thing is that once you try something that isn’t the 20 dollar Walmart keyboard but a good ergonomic keyboard, heck, even a half assed, ergo keyboard - you realize how much better things could be. And down the rabbit hole you go. I’m hoping it’s a phase. But it’s also a fun hobby. Albeit a costly one.
- 3y ago
- walteweiss 3y agoDitto! A couple of random (not even a custom built) mechanical keyboards, plus an Apple one, plus MX Masters (the most popular keyboard, I assume). Even me, I had tried like 10 times more keyboards. And I’m not even obsessed with them, just your average computer nerd with 20+ years of experience and friends, with whom I can swap keyboards, to play with.
- dotancohen 3y ago...two of which have near-identical layouts, and one of which I'm typing on now! I have literally dozens of keyboards: mechanical, split, ergonomic, mobile, the list should end but it doesn't... And yet I'm typing on this split, tented, rubber dome Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic. It has tactile keys, and such an extraordinarily low profile that I can type with it on my lap with my wrists pointed down. It has function keys and I don't need a second layer or FN key to access home/end/pageup/pagedown. The spacebar is split so it doesn't bind like many single-body split keyboards. And it's wireless! This mass-produced, reasonably inexpensive keyboard is not perfect in any way, but it's 90% to perfect in almost every single way.
- Scarbutt 3y agoLove the Sculpt except for the horrible FN keys and the FN switch.
- dotancohen 3y agoI actually wired a pushbutton to my first Sculpt to get to the media keys. But now I just map the volume controls to a convenient shortcut in KDE.
- chongli 3y agoYeah I don’t think any of these folks have that much of an issue. Compare with the people spending thousands or even millions of dollars on little rectangles of printed paperboard and locking them away inside little display cases!
- m463 3y agoMy keyboard journey led me to a committed ltr with a topre realforce rgb, with the dampeners added under the keys. My mouse is a left handed steelseries sensei 10.
- hinkley 3y agoI'm counting 6 plus a plan to buy another before the end of the year.
- eichin 3y agoyeah, I often have more keyboards than that on my desk at one time. (But as someone who knows Marcin Wichary and Jesse Vincent - I don't have a problem, I am the problem :)
- hakfoo 3y agoI've built the same keyboard four times over the last three years. Version 1 used a Teensy++ and Box Pale Blue switches. Version 2 used a Teensy++ and Matias Click switches, and added a bodged-on OLED. This required a completely new PCB design. Version 3 used the same PCB, and some more Matias switches from my parts box, but swapped in a nanoCH32V305 controller using a little interposer adapter board. It was mostly to work the kinks out of the custom firmware for the CH32V305. Version 4 ended up with footprints to use either Alps or MX-footprint switches and either the Teensy or nanoCH32V305. I now have stacks of spare PCBs and plates, just waiting for a better switch than Box White v2.
- nerdix 3y agoRight, 5 relatively cheap keyboards over the course of a few years is perfectly healthy