Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1-more | Hacker News Reader

> I destroy keyboards in 12 months. Even good quality mechanical ones.

Wait how? How do they fail? This is interesting to me.

Same here, I don't think I've _ever_ destroyed a keyboard in my life. After about a decade on one, I just get tired of it and want to try something new.

Right now my favorite is the wired Apple Magic keyboard with numpad. I bought my current one new on ebay during covid at a big of a premium because they stopped making them years ago and are NLA. I don't use a Mac so the layout is funky, but all of the standard-layout knock-offs are bluetooth-only, have poor reviews, or are staggeringly expensive.

Not the person you're asking, but for me: I've been buying crap tier mechanical keyboards every ~9 months for the last few years to get a good feel for different switches and layouts, so I don't spend a lot of money on a really nice one I don't like. The quality is a big factor.

The other factor is that I'm a key masher. I just don't type lightly, particularly when I'm gaming - my brain refuses to accept that pressing W harder doesn't make me go faster, and my failure mode tends to be one of:

* switch breaks/wears out

* pcb stressed/flexed by my mashing causes traces or solder joints to loosen. Keys will only work sometimes, and sometimes end up putting out the wrong letter. Pushing hard on the misbehaving key will often make that one work but surrounding keys will start misbehaving. This has happened on a few keyboards!

It's a little wasteful, but for the cost of 1 good keyboard I've found out that I would have chosen the wrong layout and wrong switch type if I has sprung for a good one right away. I also learned I need a good key plate and maybe go with wire wrapping instead of a PCB for the switches.

ah, I totally forgot the gaming angle. FWIW I've broken switches too: I shipped my keyboard with not enough padding and my E switch broke, and the switches under my thumbs died because they had too much mechanical strain on the ALPS style leads with no place to mate the switch body with the PCB. In both cases I put in new switches and carried on since I built the darn thing to begin with.

Well for this keyboard since it's Hall effect sensors rather than switches I actually think it would hold up for you!

I think the Flux keyboard is a neat idea - personally I would prefer a small version, detached numpad-esque, but still with the changable modules, for ancillary input. Like a fancier stream deck.

As for the keyboard proper, I think its too late - a colleague and I are in the process of speccing out something for me to assemble based on my usage data, and I've caught the bug :) (just yesterday I spent a lot of time looking at keycaps of all things, I don't think I ever envisioned myself spending time on that sort of thing, but here we are)

hahah it's insidious! I built my daily driver in mid 2018 and I've been contemplating the next generation every day since. It's dormant, but never gone. I'm almost ready to get a 3d printer and get cracking.

Not the OP, but I probably go through a Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic every 24-36 months. The wrist-rest also gets gross after a while.

Mostly it's spills, but sometimes also a crumb or something stuck under a key and me breaking the switch in the process of trying to clean it.

I think I also have one where I just physically lost the wireless dongle. I have some spare ones from the _other_ ones I killed, but AFAICT they're "securely" paired at the factory and there's no way to reprogram those.

Well the mechanical keyboards, the key caps start falling off and won't stay on or the crappy lead free solder gives out on the keyswitches. The rubber dome ones, the rubber domes wear out and crap gets in and then it's end of the road. The ones that survive that tend to find out they have a coffee allergy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com