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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

Brown-type switches are OK, it's the blue-type keys that are problematic.

Yeah, but he's talking about the conversion kits to digitize input on a typewriter. That's next level annoying.

Wait, that's a thing? (Quickly Googling...) OMG, that's a thing.

People in the office are still using old-school typewriters for certain official documents, so I expect I can get away with it. If I can't concentrate due to existing office noise, I may as well have some fun. Thanks!

I used to work in a room with over 300 Model M's. I think I have PTSD from it. Machine gun fire from 9am til 5pm.

I used to be the blue-vs-brown guy (mostly because my brown keyboard made a lot less sound that my coworker's blue), but then I tried his keyboard and let him try mine and it turned out that it wasn't about the keyboard switches, rather it was about the person using them. My blues made a lot less sound than his browns.

I was told my brown switches were horrendous :(

It's the keys bottoming out. Add some rubber o-rings to dampen that sound.

That only works for some keycap profiles, if you use DSA or SA profile then you can't really dampen them well.

Learning to type without bottoming out not only will mostly elliminate the noise of brown switches but also reduce the shock tranmitted to the fingers. Ever since I stopped bottoming out (except for the spacebar and pinky-operated backspace) my typing comfort went up a lot.

Was once commended on my hard work since a manager could hear my constant typing on my Browns. Annoyed a lot of people in the process, of course.

Funny thing about loud keyboards. A few years ago my company had a programming pit, and I could tell when ever one of my younger programmers was chatting with a friend rather than working. His typing rate would go from 20 wpm to 100 wpm. FYI I quickly abandoned the programming pit, back to quite workspaces for all!

In most cases, it's the keys bottoming out rather the switches. Guy in our office with a membrane keyboard who smashes the keys into oblivion is far louder than the two mechanical keyboards in the same space.

I have brown keys and bottoming out is definitely the noisy part.

Buy some o-rings, they really do help with the bottoming out noise. Alternatively, train yourself not to bottom out.

After some coworkers complained I bought some o-rings for my brown-switch keyboard. It's much quieter although there are now other keyboards in the room that aren't quietened.

Still I like the newer quietened version, so I'm considering buying some more for my home keyboard (it is an identical model).

Yep. Kinesis Advantage plus o-rings is plenty quiet.

By the way, I cannot type without bottoming out, and I suspect this is something many people simply cannot learn to do. My hands will just not cooperate. I use Topre switches, which are supposedly quite ideal for practicing this magical voodoo typing technique, and when pressing a key enough to activate it but not bottom out, I have about a 50-50 chance of not activating the key at all. It's not something that's ever going to get better with practice, and frankly, I'm not personally aware of any detrimental effects of my bad bottom-out typing.

I use a topre too, and I bottomed out too, as it turned out that blues a lot better in terms of teaching you not to bottom out (because they have an audible click which provides you about the feedback of the actuation point).

I'd recommend to get used blue and try it out.

you can get o-rings to dampen the bottoming-out of the keycap.

I use green switches with o-rings in a semi-open office layout and the only people who have ever noticed it are other mech enthusiasts. Browns with o-rings would be even quieter than greens.

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