I was expecting to see 10s of keyboards as you'd see from most in r/MechanicalKeyboards and was disappointed to only find 5.
Not an unhealthy relationship at all!
Not an unhealthy relationship at all!
Now I have an Advantage 3 with Box White switches, after admittedly talking to an Upgrade Keyboards key switch sommelier, which I admit somewhat undercuts my first sentence in this comment.
I genuinely hope this is someone's official job title somewhere.
"How about some cherry mx blue and caviar while we take over the world?"
Aren't those like $500 a pop? Handing out that kind of dough for a keyboard sounds like the opposite of stopping being much into keyboards.
This said, they used to be cheaper.
A keyboard can last 20+ years, while a computer around 5 years before it becomes obsolete, more or less. People buy other keyboards because it’s missing something. The kinesis while not perfect is the best keyboard you can buy without building your own from scratch. Nothing comes close, except datahand, but they don’t make those anymore. I stopped buying keyboards after the kinesis.
However, someone who has 5-6 sub-$10k cars in their garage is almost definitely very into cars. It is about tinkering with them, racing them, restoring, building project cars, doing car shows, collecting them, etc. Doesn’t have to be all of those at all, just any single one (including those I haven’t explicitly mentioned there) would be more than enough.
The pricing doesn’t have much to do with someone being into a hobby. My personal guess is that it is more about how much time you actively dedicate to it.
Do you type things 8 hours a day? Then 500 USD for a keyboard that lasts you two decades is money well spent, if it makes you happy.
Like others I credit my first kinesis with saving my career. I was starting to get RSI issues, doctor put me in braces and I showed him the kinesis site to see what he thought about their claims, if any of his other patients had tried. He thought it passed the smell test, I bought one the next day and drove out to the HQ (they are near seattle) and picked it up.
It takes a bit to get used to it, especially if you aren't a strong touch typist. The columner layout is weird at first, the wells are weird at first, the thumb clusters are weird at first. Within a month I was back up to speed and was able to shed my bracers soon after.
[1]: https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-k15-pro-alice-lay...
have you used this for gaming? specifically FPSs and MMORPGs where left hand needs easy access to the right side of the split-keyboard?
But if there’s something specific you have in mind I can try to answer here.
Heck, in my engineering office (a bubble if there ever was one) there are only two other people who own more than one keyboard at home or know what a "mechanical" keyboard is, and most of us only have a couple 'special' keyboards. Most of my family and non-work friends have either one or zero, if you don't count on-screen keyboards on phones and tablets or integrated keyboards on laptops (which I don't think should count).
Have you seen an auto mechanic's toolbox, or carpenter's tool crib?
Using the wrong tool, or even one which is only a few percent less efficient than optimal, is a mistake.
Honestly, all you really need is to lube the switches. That’s biggest benefit. A lubed mechanical switch, even the cheapest generic red, out performs anything off the shelf.
Now I have a number of mechanicals (i love, or did..) that I side-eye as they don't have that hearty damp at the end. :/
(i consistently work at 3 desks, only have gasket on one)
The same can be said about heroin.
(A couple of Das Keyboards here and only one is even modified, but let's say I'm mechanical-curious. :P )
It was tons of fun. But at the end of the day, I keep coming back to my Ergodox. I'm just so used to it now after all these years I don't think I could give it up.
I have literally dozens of keyboards: mechanical, split, ergonomic, mobile, the list should end but it doesn't... And yet I'm typing on this split, tented, rubber dome Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic. It has tactile keys, and such an extraordinarily low profile that I can type with it on my lap with my wrists pointed down. It has function keys and I don't need a second layer or FN key to access home/end/pageup/pagedown. The spacebar is split so it doesn't bind like many single-body split keyboards. And it's wireless!
This mass-produced, reasonably inexpensive keyboard is not perfect in any way, but it's 90% to perfect in almost every single way.
Version 1 used a Teensy++ and Box Pale Blue switches. Version 2 used a Teensy++ and Matias Click switches, and added a bodged-on OLED. This required a completely new PCB design. Version 3 used the same PCB, and some more Matias switches from my parts box, but swapped in a nanoCH32V305 controller using a little interposer adapter board. It was mostly to work the kinks out of the custom firmware for the CH32V305. Version 4 ended up with footprints to use either Alps or MX-footprint switches and either the Teensy or nanoCH32V305. I now have stacks of spare PCBs and plates, just waiting for a better switch than Box White v2.