Or why I bought a $135 keyboard. Not that this post is not to encourage you to buy the Das Keyboard but mechanical keyboards in general. There are a lot of awesome mechanical keyboards so check them all out before making up your mind!
So my 25th birthday was coming up and all of my friends thought that I should treat myself and get something really. I didn’t really think much about it but the following weekend I remember reading on coding horror about keyboards and I decided to look it up again. You can read the article here and the funny thing about it is that the author uses the same keyboard as I did, the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000.
Let me get one thing clear. I have loved this keyboard since the day I bought it. I love ergonomic keyboards, I love the design and the keyboard is almost perfect. It wasn’t until I lived with my laptop for a couple of month and returning to this keyboard I started to realize that it was a bit tough to write on. Thinking about that made me remember the coding horror article. After reading a lot of forum posts and other links I decided that there was no way my life would be complete without a mechanical keyboard.
There are a lot of good articles which can describe this much better than me so I will only summarize my thoughts and let you read the rest on other sites and make your own conclusions. First of all there is a problem for me who is from Sweden. We have different keyboard-layouts. Since we have some additional characters so the first problem was to find a keyboard with the correct layout. I found some mechanical keyboards with Swedish layout like the SteelSeries, Razor, Filco and some others but none of them felt quite right.
At first I was really stubborn about having a ergonomic keyboard like my old but I gave that up after looking for a decent one for hours. The Swedish layout was a big problem and some of the ergonomic keyboards are just to weird, the Truly Ergonomic was on the right track tough. So I gave up the idea of an ergonomic keyboard (my brain would explode if I could have the Microsoft Natural 4000 with mechanical switches).
The next decision was which switch to use. After a lot of research (but unfortunately no hands on experience) I felt like the Cherry MX Brown was the right choice for me. So after a lot of searching it came down to the Das Keyboard Ultimate Silent. I ordered that bad boy from a store in Germany and it worked as a Swedish since I could use the Ultimate EU version with blank keys. After just a couple of minutes to realize how amazing mechanical keyboards are. You know when you’ve got a really bad fever dream and you run in slow motion like you where running in jelly, that is how it’s like to returning to a regular keyboard when you’re used to a mechanical one.
Some final words about this. Mechanical keyboards are really awesome and the Das Keyboard is truly wonderful. I dig the sleek look of all blank keys (and the fact that my girlfriend can’t use it) but there is a version with laser etched chars on the keyboards for those who need it. The keyboard is heavy and the feeling is nothing but quality. But note that I bought the Silent version of Das Keyboard and it still makes much much more sound than my old keyboard. Lesson: mechanical keyboards make a lot of sounds. Check YouTube to find out how much sound the keyboard you plan to buy makes if you can’t try it before you buy it.
And after living with keyboards with Windows-keys all of my life while running Linux I finally had my revenge. I bought additional Tux-keys and placed them on the supposed-to-be-Windows-keys so now I have a completely blank keyboard – except with Tux-logos! Compensation complete.
