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@itgrrl@infosec.exchange
Post #4473089
2026-08-10 02:08 UTC
@decryption@aus.social well, $360 is objectively a lot for a keyboard – especially for those of us who grew up poor & will never really be able to shake all the things that flow from that experience 💁♀️
I’m interested to know which #keeb, & what are the 🦄 features that draw you to it over other keebs 👀 (I’m not looking to dissuade you, ofc., just interested)
for me, I’ve owned multiple #MechKeebs, but I don’t think I’ve paid more than ~$150 for any of them and most were ~$120-$130 (and I agonised over spending the money on my first one for, I suspect, similar reasons)
but I have pretty basic requirements for #keebs:
– mech switches (or equivalents, I guess, I haven’t really strayed much from Cherry MXes)
– good switches – I’ve tried Cherry MX browns, blues, reds, & LP reds (on my portable keeb) but tend to prefer blues for both the tactility & the sound (unless I’m in an office where such noises might get me stabbed in the eye with a fork 🤪)
– decent RGB lighting (with shine-through keycap legends), both for the ~~cYb3rpUnk~~ aesthetic 🤪 & for allowing me to actually see the keycap legends[1] in suboptimal office lighting 😩
– not-shit software for setting / saving lighting profiles (I’m givin’ you side-eye, #CoolerMaster 😮💨) OR
– decent on-keeb capabilities for setting RGB layout & profiles (which is the one area that Cooler Master[2] actually do – er, did 🪦 – pretty well)
I’m too old[3] to re-train my muscle memory to a split ortho layout, so I haven’t / won’t (? 🤔) explored that particular expensive rabbit hole…
weirdly, for whatever reason keebs are one of the few areas that I’ve been able to pretty quickly get to “this’ll do nicely, I don’t need to keep agonising over optimising this on an ongoing basis…” 🎉
1 see [3]
2 my daily drivers (home / work / portable) are all Cooler Masters at this point, with a couple of other cheapies floating around for various projects that I may or may not ever get to 🙃
3 not really 😜 but the typing performance hit is a PiTA akin to when I’ve attempted to finally become fully touch-typing capable – I was hunt-&-pecking on a terrible chiclet keyboard for my first computer, which was before I got to do a typing elective in secondary school (I fell in the gap between “teach the girls typing so they can be secretaries” & “teach all the kids typing so they can use a computer effectively” – which TBH I’m not sure we ever actually did in Aus, just somehow assuming that kids would become touch typists by osmosis like we assume that they’ll become “good at computers” or “digital natives” by repeatedly pushing buttons on their pocket rectangles until the slot-machine pays out & then just remembering the sequence of button pushes…[4])
4 …but I digress 🤪
Replies (2)
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@itgrrl@infosec.exchange this is the keyboard: https://electronicmaterialsoffice.com/
i've owned a few mechanical keyboards and a few nicer logitech keyboards and they're fine, but the $15 dell keyboard is also fine
Open ##4477488
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@itgrrl@infosec.exchange @decryption@aus.social Unfortunately you've awoken my most verbose nerdic hobby, so I shall answer in 4 parts:
1. Software
2. Keyboard
3. Key caps
4. Switches
Software:
QMK was where it was at last time I looked (https://qmk.fm/)
Keyboards:
My preference is the CTRL/ENTR/ALT models that Drop.com *used* to make. Sadly Drop.com (formerly MassDrop) is now just a co-branding skin around Corsair stuff. You can still find their old stuff on Amazon and eBay (possibly "new old stock"). They were made out of milled aluminium and were solid, but not TOO weighty (and didnt ring when you typed on them). They used QMK firmware.
Key Caps:
"A good set of key caps" is hard to find twice. They're very "fashion conscious" and constantly come and go in colours and designs. The main key profiles are reasonably static, though (look at https://www.keycaps.info/stack). The plastic they're made of is important too (ABS/styrene is noticeably light and plasticky)
My personal preference is MT3 (I think?) - they have a curved profile, depressed faces and most importantly, heavy plastic and softer corners. Most of the other cylindric ones are hard on my fingers. The flat profiles feel "off", Sadly it's difficult to get "shine through" working on a curved profile (unless you had equal height keys on a curved frame - but no one makes that anymore). My personal fave colour is "Solarized Dark", which Drop made once.
Switches:
Hoo boy! - This is even more "faddy" than caps (There are just so may pretty looking switches with cutesie names now). It's true that ultimately they all harken back to either "clicky", "linear" or "tactile" forms (usually referred to their Cherry MX colours of blue, red or brown). My personal preference is for a "silent tactile" switch with a soft-rubber bumper at the top and bottom of the stem rails (I tried faking this with O-rings around the stem once - doesn't work). I have a set I love - but cannot remember who made them.
Open ##4477808