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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

> The best thing about typing on a mechanical keyboard, by far, is the sound. The click-clack-click-clack is so familiar, and so soothing ...

Maybe it's soothing for the person hammering away on their mechanical keyboard, but for anyone unfortunate enough to share an office with said person it's excruciating. I really don't get why the whole noisy-keyboard-in-a-shared-office never gets any play when this is discussed. Am I just oversensitive to this?

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The problem is that you're in a shared office. It's a wonder to me that people get anything done in that kind of environment. Too many distractions and interruptions, plus the pervasive background anxiety of being watched all the time. I don't think I could do it.

> I really don't get why the whole noisy-keyboard-in-a-shared-office never gets any play when this is discussed.

If it is a problem there is simple solution - private office, remote office or I fire the company. Simple. Effective. And why would anyone want to share office - I have no idea.

It's very good that you're in the sort of position where you can make a stand on that sort of thing - but I'm not quite there myself. In any case I do like a shared space ("office" was maybe incorrect in my original comment) but for people to be productive everyone needs to be just a little bit more considerate than if they had their own office.

You're not over-sensitive. I love mechanical keyboards but only use at home because it's obviously disruptive to colleagues in the office.

I've been using MX clear switches for a few weeks now in my open office. Before starting a routine of using it in the office I asked everyone in my immediate area to be very open about telling me if the noise bothered them. I haven't had any complaints yet.

Both you and your parent post are very considerate people, and your colleagues are lucky :)

Yeah, it is still a big deal in a lot of environments (including home, making your signification other want to kill you is never good).

Years ago I switched from Cherry to Topre when that was a fancy import-only thing. Now, you can get Topre all over the place. I use the Novatouch TKL currently with dampeners (which come right in the box) -- which is office friendly, has MX compatible stems and is just an all around awesome keyboard.

We've got two mechanical keyboards in our office, but everybody is wearing headphones or talking on the phone anyways. Up until a few years ago office computers were noisy, this has recently changed with laptops being good enough and "silent" pc cases.

But yeah, I've been typing on cherry black switches for a decade now, so cherry blue switches still sound loud to me.

I've used a mechanical for a couple years in a cubicle environment, without complaint. It helps that I use Cherry Browns or Reds and trained myself to type without bottoming out much. It's not especially loud that way.

Typing like that increased my typing speed by about 20wpm, and eliminated some soreness I was starting to develop in my finger joints.

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