Alas, Poor Keyboard

[billroper]

My trusty SIIG mechanical keyboard with the Alps switches -- the one that they don't make any more -- has gone the way of all electronics, as the "a" key started misfiring today. Sometimes I would get one "a", sometimes none, and sometimes many. This is not a good state for a keyboard.

It had done this before and some judicious cleaning had helped, but there was no obvious crap to be removed this time.

So I have fetched a spare, unsatisfactory keyboard from the basement and have gone to Amazon and ordered this CM Storm Quick Fire XT with Cherry MX Blue Switches which appears to be the best keyboard I am likely to lay hands on for under $100.

It's supposed to arrive on Saturday.

I am looking forward to it. This Targus keyboard is like typing on mush after years of the SIIG keyboard.

*sigh*

Comments

[seticat.livejournal.com]

I have the older, non-illuminated version of this: Merc Keyboard (http://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Merc-Stealth-Gaming-Keyboard/dp/B00292OW1U/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1415332731&sr=1-1&keywords=merc+keyboard) Got it back before it was expensive. I'm so used to it now I don't think I could use anything else.

[billroper]

That's a bit more keyboard than I'm looking for -- not necessarily in terms of price, but in terms of gaming features. Mostly, I just type. :)

[seticat.livejournal.com]

I've got a few of the far left hand keys programmed for things like jump, fly, right, left, etc. Between those and my mouse, that's about the extent of my 'high end' gaming. ;}

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Things like this always remind me of an old joke:

MEMO TO REPAIRTH:

Pleathe thend thomeone to work on thith typewriter. The eth key ith thtuck.

[madfilkentist]

They haven't made decent keyboards since the VT-100. (And we did our computing in primoooordial darkness...)

You want 'em? You can buy 'em!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

I was going to ask you what Alps keys were, but I decided to Google it first, and found this (http://matias.ca/switches/click/):

Rebirth of the ALPS tradition.
There was a time when the best keyboards in the world used ALPS switches, a time before lesser (cheaper) technologies took over. If you remember that time, or even if you don't, you can still experience that time. Our Matias Click Switches are a faithful re-creation of the ALPS switches used in some of the best keyboards ever made.

...

Improving on the ALPS tradition.
We were HUGE fans of the original clicky ALPS switches. In fact, we went to great lengths to ensure that they stayed in production — at one point, committing to buy a Million switches!

However, when it became clear that we were living on borrowed time, we knew we had to do something. It was the heart of our award-winning Tactile Pro. If that switch died, our product would die with it.

Our factory suggested that we adopt Cherry switches instead, but they felt and sounded cheap to us — like an old rubber dome keyboard that had lost all of its elasticity. They were linear and tinny sounding. We liked tactile and clicky.

So, we picked the only course of action left to us... Attempt an authentic re-creation of our beloved ALPS switch. We weren't sure if we'd pull it off, but we had to try.
2 years and a million little details later, we not only succeeded in re-creating the greatness of the original ALPS switch, we improved upon it...

We eliminated the "chorus of springs", a residual ringing sound that some users found annoying. We upgraded the quality and thickness of the materials used to make the switches.

In short, we made the best ALPS switch so far.

Built to last longer.
Traditional ALPS switches had an operating life of 10 million cycles. Matias Click Switches last 5x longer — 50 million cycles.

NKRO support.
Most keyboards cannot register more than a few keys pressed at once, so they may not be able to keep up with very fast typists. The result is called ghosting — letters missing from what you actually typed, or additional letters that you didn't type.

These problems can be eliminated completely on a mechanical keyboard, simply by adding a diode to each switch. This is one of the major advantages mechanical keyboards have over cheaper technologies.

Re: You want 'em? You can buy 'em!

[billroper]

That's interesting, but it's 50% or more higher than the keyboard I bought and they don't have a regular PC version, only the quiet one, so I'll give the new one a try and see how it goes.

But thanks for the pointer!