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Comment by mcculley | Hacker News Reader

I bought a keyboard from Unicomp hoping to get something as great as the Model M. It arrived with keycaps popped off during shipping and failed not long after that (https://twitter.com/mcculley/status/659798006208856064). I have since bought several Das Keyboards for myself and my staff. I love them.

Of course, we have private offices. I would not advise using these great keyboards in open floor plan offices or coworking spaces.

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> I would not advise using these great keyboards in open floor plan offices or coworking spaces.

That says more about having open floor offices than having to restrict personal use of the single most important input device in many offices.

I would advise everyone to start using these keyboards in open floor offices. That'll certainly hasten the end of this terrible fad (the open floor offices, not the keyboards).

I agree. That’s why I favor real offices for doing real work. Still, I occasionally work in close proximity to others. I would not bring along one of these keyboards to such situations and suffer along with my laptop keyboard.

I have a Unicomp with the Ctrl and caps lock keys swapped out of the box, it was one of those "Linux" or UNIX models. I'm old enough to have used a real Model M in high school and I couldn't tell the difference between them when typing. It's a great keyboard and I hope it never dies.

Interesting! I bought one a few years ago, and other than slightly cheaper plastic extrusion, I can’t tell that there’s anything worse about this than a classic Model M.

To your second point, when it came time to get a mechanical keyboard for a open plan office, I bought a firm, but non-clacky Cherry switch keyboard. I quite like feel of it... there’s something satisfying about the Unicomp / Model M, but I can’t help but think the actual typing experience of the Rosewill generic Cherry keyboard isn’t a bit better.

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