I see a lot of talk (hype?) about this, but I've used IBM keyboards in the past and I don't miss it. Am I the only one who actually prefers low-profile keyboards like the Mac/MacBook ones?
I personally think the chiclet boards have a lot in common with the mechanical ones - there's a very nonlinear resistance and it's pretty clear when you have, versus haven't, activated a key. I don't find many mechanical aficionados agree :)
So far, I agree on the nonlinear feedback, and a perk is that it's a lot quieter (coders don't mind, but where I sit now it feels like I'm a kid in a corner creating a ruckus with my mech keyboard).
Many cheap rubber dome keyboards are of course horrible, but some are pretty good. I use a Dell somethingorother at home, and its very good. I also use a cheap Lenovo SK 8825 and there's nothing wrong with it at all.
Cherry switches seem to have an industrial heritage, and they seem to have been adopted by the type of gamer who likes to treat their keyboard like a Hyper Sports cabinet. Indeed, the red switch was created for gamers.
The switches don't provide much of a typing experience, unless you like the feeling of a key slamming onto a hard surface. Which you can mitigate by using O rings to try to retrieve the rubber dome feel.
Here's a quick <del>keycap</del> recap on the Cherry switches. - Blacks. Heavy duty basic linear switch used in Carphone Warehouse POS terminals, Police keyboards, and Steelseries G series. Guaranteed cramps. - Red. "Fast" version of Blacks, for FPS gamers. Unsuitable for any typing. - Brown. Like a version of Reds with a bit of grit on the stem to act as an "early warning alarm" so you can hopefully avoid the painful bottoming out. - Blue. Makes an artificial "click" halfway down the stem to fool your brain that you're using a good keyboard. Highly antisocial - favoured by people who plant leylandiis at the bottom of their small gardens.
My big beef with the Mac keyboards is the spacing. I can get around 60 wpm on a Macbook and 110-120 (touch typing both) on my desktop board. It's just super hard to use one when each key is so much farther than what you get accustomed to on a large mechanical board.