I have no plans to buy any more boards anytime soon. I’m not a huge fan of the taller keycap profile of the Keychron, but I’ll give it some time before considering different keycaps
I like to give my keebs away as gifts. It allows me to keep up with the hobby, share my passion with friends/family, and hopefully prevents them from buying cheapo keyboards that are more likely to break. I’m all about reducing waste, but there are ways to do this while still pursuing the hobby!
I could see it being possible to use, if they were the spring-loaded momentary toggles, and mounted upside down, so up was off. It would still be horrible, but possible.
Agreed, but it’s easy to understimate how ignorant most people outside the hobby are. Hardware Canucks once made a video about the basics of it and a third of it was just plain bullshit. The comments were full of praise, not a single criticism in the first 200.
I honestly believe some people will take this article at face value because they don’t know any better.
Haha no no, I get it. I gathered they might be a good place to start but wanted to put out feelers. What’s the deal with Switch Type and Switch Option?
They should mean the same thing: Different types of keyboard switches that affect the typing experience. RTings has a pretty extensive article about them (https://www.rtings.com/keyboard/learn/mechanical-switches) but you mainly need to know there are three kinds, the clicky ones, which make that nice noise with a bump as you press on them, tactile, which only has the bump, and linear, which has none of the above. Using which kind is a personal preference (I like my clickies), so you'll need to figure out what you like. This is the part where you'll need to invest in some time and money because there's no way of figuring out what you like unless you try it for a period of time.
Great, if you are, my advice is to go with Kailh's Box clickies. They use a click bar which feels much better, and from my experienece so far won't wear out as easily as the click jackets in other clicky switches.
Great thank you! I’m trying to make out the difference between all the different series of Keychron, I know the Q is their top line but is there a quick way to decipher?
If you’re looking to start messing with switches, and modifying things seems intriguing, you can always look at building a board. I really like the Meletrix Zoom line. You have to wait for group buys, but you get a highly customizabled device.
Its an investment in time, energy, and money l, but you truly get something one of a kind. They only open up the group buy about twice a year, so patience is key. So this might now work for you considering you need something soon, but the group buy keyboard world has some really cool options.
Group buy means a group of people all order their board at the same time (usually through a vendor in whichever region you’re in. Zoom keyboards group buy for North America takes place through Cannonkeys.com) so enough quantity can be produced to interest factories to actually take on the order. Nice keyboards are certainly a niche product. Group buys are risky business. I like Meletrix keyboards because they are relatively affordable, good sturdy heavy build, and they have shipped very close to on time for the 2 orders I’ve placed so far. But it’s not uncommon to hear horror stories of products never shipping or delays on top of delays. But it is a journey. I kind of treat the experience like a large Lego set or a model. It takes time and patience but the results are great.
Second Keychron. I have a Q8, K6 and Q0 and love all of them. The Q8 and Q0 are built like tanks and weigh as much. The K6 is light and perfect for on the go.
If I had known the Q14 was coming I most likely would have waited for a non-southpaw version of that.
Yup! 96% Southpaw Alice. If they come out with a regular 96% Alice then we’ll finally have a mech replacement for the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 which is one of the most comfortable and affordable ergonomic keyboards ever made.
Well I personally think thats one of the smoothest keyboards I have ever seen. Its giving me the same feeling a really smooth rock does when you hold it or look at it.
The ancient monitor in the background is what adds this vibe of mystery to it, makes your brain question the image a little. But it also completes the image.
Slightly bigger so they wouldn’t have to slaughter the layout to get arrow keys in there and I would be interested.
It already pisses me off that so many notebook keyboards deviate from the IBM “standard”. I don’t need an external keyboard to fuck with my muscle memory.
Sure. And I haven’t seen a single one I like, so far. Compact tenkeyless are my threshold. I like the knobs and display (and the general customizability) of this WorkLouder keyboard, otherwise. But not the general layout.
If you’re talking about the tucked-in arrow keys, you’d be surprised how quickly you adapt. I’ve gotten so used to it that the more spaced-out configuration feels unnatural to me at this point. I don’t think I’m alone, as I’m seeing this layout more and more.
Give it a try (maybe not on something as expensive as this is!) Maybe you’ll like it and it’ll open up more options for you.
You know, I wish you hadn’t told me that. I was enjoying the thought of a fellow human being blessed with a phenomenal memory having found what I had been looking for for years in a matter of minutes.
Instead, I’m reminded that we’re entering an age where no effort is required to come up with anything, and also that I really should pay close attention never to reveal any personal information in anything I put out on the internet - even more attention than I already pay - because AI will immediately swallow it without my consent.
Yes, it is a miracle indeed - a sad technological miracle, instead of a happy human one.
I really like that much like a calculator or a very sophisticated search engine we can use large language models (LLMs) to enhance our cognitive capabilities. My memory works in such a way that I would be completely useless without a search engine, while I have almost unlimited capacity when it comes to puzzling together LLMs and search queries. I don’t feel that it takes anything away from humans, it’s just a tool like any other that allows us to expand our capabilities, just in a cognitive capacity!
I would have never ever been able to figure out what that keyboard was called, but just by squeezing the answer out of a model that has obviously been trained on that data, we were able to figure out the answer.
If it were to have been done by purely human memory, we would have had to have a person that actually knew this bit of super obscure knowledge and the same person by some amazing chance reading this post.
I see no sadness, just a tool that is globally available to almost anyone (25 USD month for GPT4 or perhaps anyone being able to run their own open-source miqu-1–70b from mistral.ai) and has the capacity to elevate human cognition, simply by adopting a mindset of directing an LLM to get the results we need, much like typing a query into a search engine.
I see no sadness, just a tool that is globally available to almost anyone […] and has the capacity to elevate human cognition
Kind of off-topic, but I’m genuinely curious: how old are you if I might ask?
I’m a gen-Xer myself, and I see AI as one of the greatest advances for mankind that could have been, that is quickly being turned into a tool of utter social devastation by greedy capitalist psychopaths, putting profits before all, putting people out of a job, pushing them into poverty while widening the already obscene inequality gap between ordinary working Joes and the ultra-billionnaires. My own prediction is that all of this will end badly, and blood will be shed when enough people are unable to feed their families because AI has rendered their jobs obsolete.
All I see in AI is sad times ahead, that will pass eventually and probably lead to a better life for everybody, but not before I’m long dead and a lot of people of today have suffered greatly because of it.
But here’s the thing: whenever I discuss AI with friends and coworkers, I’m always shocked by the disconnect between people my age and people even only 15 years younger: younger folks genuinely seem to think it’s a great time to be alive, to be part of the brave new AI world, and they genuinely can’t wait to be part of it. And all I can think of - I and people my age alike - is “How can they not see what’s unfolding?”
That’s why I’m curious what age you are. If I was to guess, I’d say you’re under 40. Did I guess right? 🙂
Ultimately it doesn’t matter though: either we older folks are right and the great disaster is coming, or we’re wrong and we’ll look like fools - and we’ll probably end up just as clueless about new technologies as our grandparents were with computers. Either way, whatever must happen will happen…
You don’t sound much more hopeful than I am in all honesty, and almost as cynical about where society is headed 🙂 The only difference is, I don’t wish the good guys win because I think they’ve already lost, and the revolution will not be digital but will happen with real guns and real blood one day.
As for cryptocurrencies… don’t get me started: I’ve always known it was a wide-eyed fool’s errand at best, and a pyramid scheme variant at worst, even when it was only Bitcoin and it was worth a fraction of a cent per. In fact - silly me - I even built a mining rig sometime around 2009 or 2010, since people were starting to talk about it. You known, just a PC doing that 24/7. I mined a bunch of Bitcoins for a couple of weeks, then got bored and repurposed the machine to do something more useful with the electricity it burned. I would never have though those pointless Bitcoins would fetch a single dollar a piece, let alone 50 thousand or whatever it was at the peak of the bubble. I kind of wish I hadn’t wiped the hard disk in retrospect 🙂 But hindsight is always 20/20. Still, I never regretted not taking part in that gigantic idiocy.
Anyhoos, I guess we’ll see how things turn out. I have kids too and they’re all grown up and out of college, and landed cushy jobs, so I’m not too worried for them. As for me, I’m old enough that I’m reasonably hopeful that if things turn sour, it’ll be after I’m gone. I’ve already enjoyed the good times, so I can’t complain really.
Prebuilts from brands like Ducky? mechanicalkeyboards.com
DIY kits are generally best bought from their mfg's - Akko, Keychron, GMMK, Keycult.
More general retailers will have some mix of keycaps, switches, kits, maybe prebuilts and accessories - Novelkeys, Canon Keys, Mekibo, Bolsa Supply (mostly GBs), Vala Supply, KBDFans, KPRepublic (mostly caps), Kono Store, Drop (mostly caps).
To track upcoming and live GBs, at least for keycaps and keyboards - mechgroupbuys.com. It's pretty dead at the moment but I think the number of active group buys has tumbled recently due to several high profile scandals in the industry (namely Mechs & Co and Rama). Also several major keycap manufacturers piled up huge backlogs during the pandemic that are only just finally clearing up, namely GMK and Milkyway. All of that is causing there to be very few new GBs starting right now, and they can be kind of hard to find unless you're already in the communities of the designer(s) or refreshing Geekhack.
I second mechanicalkeyboards.com, the Ducky I ordered came quickly enough and it’s well made. I don’t think Amazon has anything remotely as good as what they’re offering.
I second this, I’m really impressed with my q3 and q0s quality. Though I’ve never owned a high end board to compare to. I only wish they offered wireless via 2.4ghz usb dongle.
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