As a kinesthetic person whose primary task is word processing, keyboards are extremely important to me. I have already defended the hardware keyboard on a mobile phone (see In Defense of the Droid Keyboard) for security reasons (but mainly enjoyed the tactile experience). I have also put off upgrading my Kindle reader to a newer keyboard-free version because of the hardware keyboard.
Desktop keyboards are no exception, and there are more choices here than the mobile device market. It makes sense to invest heavily in a keyboard with tactile touch-typing response for kinesthetic people, but reliability is a factor often overlooked in off-the-shelf systems and often sacrificed on custom builds. Unfortunately, most keyboards are mass produced with a rubber membrane that must be depressed fully to register a keystroke. This makes the keyboard feel mushy, rather than snappy. It can actually put a great amount of strain on the fingers of a touch typist, because the full press for every keystroke requires jamming the key to provide feedback. Durability is also a major problem. Besides the fact that the membranes harden over time and can change the amount of pressure required to type, they tend to stress rather easily. All it takes is one brittle or torn rubber dome to render the entire keyboard unusable. However, because these keyboards are inexpensive and most people do not hammer on keys all day long, market pressures actually favor the throwaway membranes.
Touch typists are generally averse to keyboard swapping because it requires relearning several things at once: the amount of travel required from home keys to peripheral keys, the placement of secondary keys in relation to the standard layout, and the size of those secondary keys (worst offender: the long or short backspace key). In addition, planned obsolescence in the electronics industry tends to lead to device hoarding. My keyboard of choice for many years was the Microsoft Office Keyboard, but it required me to keep multiple units on hand to maintain a consistent operating environment. It had a large scroll wheel and relatively heavy plastic keys. The keys provided adequate feedback and pages could be scrolled without having to rely only on the mouse. It also had a fantastic set of cut–copy–paste buttons efficiently placed right below the wheel. But the keyboards were not durable. Each one ultimately suffered from some form of membrane-related damage. Microsoft abandoned support for the keyboard within a few years, and the keyboards themselves did not last much longer.
The solution to the durability problem is a mechanical keyboard, and anybody old enough to remember the “clickety clack” of early computer keyboards were probably listening to the IBM Model M. They were heavy. The keys were stiff, so it took added pressure to activate them, and the “report” of the “buckling-spring” actuator combined with a secondary report from the snapback made for a noisy typing environment. One could type fast on them, but speed only contributed to the noise pollution. Yet they were durable: there are Model Ms made in the mid-1980s that are still in use today and can still be found on eBay in the United States. The praises sung of the IBM Model M are many:
- It created the standard 101-key layout for IBM-PCs that exists on modern keyboards
- It is often called the greatest keyboard of all time (PC World slideshow; lifehacker)
- It is often referred to merely as the “clickety clack” keyboard
- It was not only durable but also repairable: individual springs and keys could be replaced without throwing away the whole keyboard
Why not go to directly to the Model M? Tech enthusiasts claim it as an essential piece in the pantheon of tech. Every tech enthusiast should have one, or several, tucked away in a closet somewhere. They are in closets, though, because many tech enthusiasts also have spouses or office mates who do not appreciate the historic value of the Model M. They just think it’s noisy. So the clickety clack keyboard is out.
The modern mechanical keyboard market is fairly narrow and fairly focused on gaming. The Model M was ubiquitous in the days before the IBM-PC clones and contributed to a near-universal typing environment. Now consumers are subject to the whims of key placement and size by manufacturers. The buckling-spring patent has expired but there are few models available with these switches, which has inflated their prices. Modern mechanical keyboard switches are overwhelmingly constructed with the Cherry MX series. They are distinguished by color and graded according to primary use: tactile switches for the pure typists (brown, clear), linear switches for the gamers (black, red), and hybrids for the multitaskers (brown, blue).
Hybrid switches provide the best balance of tactile touch-typing response with forgiveness in accidental double strikes (remember typewriters with typebars that could stick … anyone?). For typing over long stretches, scrolling through a manuscript and occasionally typing, or cutting and pasting while pruning punctuation, the frequency of key presses can vary throughout the day yet still net a tremendous amount of force on the keyboard itself. In that type of environment, the Cherry MX Blue gives something back that mushy membranes and stiff linear switches do not: rejuvenating tactile feedback (the clickety); strike forgiveness; less pronounced but still audible report (the clack); and activation that can actually happen before the audible click, allowing one, with practice, to type more quietly while on the phone or in video chat.
I finally settled on the Das Keyboard and the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate
I began the search predisposed to the Das Keyboard. It recalled all the fond memories of the Model M with a sleek and modern look, and it is a serious production peripheral. Touch typists do not have much need in general for backlit keys (in fact, there is a Das Keyboard model with entirely blank keys). However, I like to work in the dark when I can, and backlighting is indispensable in locating rarely used keys. Mapping cut, copy, and paste to macro keys can also eliminate one keystroke per action, which is invaluable when working through a file that requires repetitive, but not globally replaceable, tasks.
In the end, the search to find a “clickety clack” to outlive the service life of a series of membrane-laden predecessors led to a keyboard similar to, but entirely unlike, the very best keyboard to have gone into production.
Dac Nelson 