#mechkeebs — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #mechkeebs, aggregated by home.social.
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@decryption 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 🤪
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@decryption 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 🤪
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@jojoeffe when I was schlepping every day to an office I bought a #CoolerMaster #SK622 – see https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/keyboards/mechanical-keyboards/85626-sk-622-gktr1-us
it’s a hybrid wired + wireless (BT 4.0), TKL 60% layout with low-profile Cherry MX switches (red, brown, blue), RGB backlighting, multi-device pairing & switching, & softkey switching between Mac & Win/Lin key layouts (the keys have legends for Mac & Win). it’s doesn’t have hot-swappable switches though but otherwise I think it would tick all your boxes
I bought this one with reds because this one was intended for a crowded open-plan office (😩) & I didn’t want to be stabbed in the neck with a fork… 😜
it’s also a great travel keyboard (it’s just 450g) should you have that need
I had no end of trouble with pairing the first one they shipped, but replacement worked well without any shenanigans
unfortunately (🤔) Cooler Master seem to have ditched their mech keyboard business, but you can find them on ebay new (🤞) for about the same as what mine cost in Dec 2022 (AUD$179 + $25 shipping & insurance)
their RGB keyboards are on-device configurable so you don’t need to use their (completely terrible) software to configure & switch between multiple layouts unless you want to do something extra-fancy or save your profiles for transfer to another keyboard (IIRC this model supports 4 saved profiles like the rest of their keebs but it’s been a while since I’ve used it in anger)
it seems like the white version was less popular than the “space grey” version, as there are many more of those on ebay – but if that’s your jam then you’re in luck
pix attached for reference
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@jojoeffe when I was schlepping every day to an office I bought a #CoolerMaster #SK622 – see https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/keyboards/mechanical-keyboards/85626-sk-622-gktr1-us
it’s a hybrid wired + wireless (BT 4.0), TKL 60% layout with low-profile Cherry MX switches (red, brown, blue), RGB backlighting, multi-device pairing & switching, & softkey switching between Mac & Win/Lin key layouts (the keys have legends for Mac & Win). it’s doesn’t have hot-swappable switches though but otherwise I think it would tick all your boxes
I bought this one with reds because this one was intended for a crowded open-plan office (😩) & I didn’t want to be stabbed in the neck with a fork… 😜
it’s also a great travel keyboard (it’s just 450g) should you have that need
I had no end of trouble with pairing the first one they shipped, but replacement worked well without any shenanigans
unfortunately (🤔) Cooler Master seem to have ditched their mech keyboard business, but you can find them on ebay new (🤞) for about the same as what mine cost in Dec 2022 (AUD$179 + $25 shipping & insurance)
their RGB keyboards are on-device configurable so you don’t need to use their (completely terrible) software to configure & switch between multiple layouts unless you want to do something extra-fancy or save your profiles for transfer to another keyboard (IIRC this model supports 4 saved profiles like the rest of their keebs but it’s been a while since I’ve used it in anger)
it seems like the white version was less popular than the “space grey” version, as there are many more of those on ebay – but if that’s your jam then you’re in luck
pix attached for reference
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paging @vampiress… 👀
Retro #Macintosh Face Key Caps
https://mechanicaps.com/product/retro-macintosh-face-key-caps/#Retro 3-in-1 #GameBoy / Calculator Interchangeable Key Caps
https://mechanicaps.com/product/retro-keycaps-3-in-1-macintosh-keycap/ -
paging @vampiress… 👀
Retro #Macintosh Face Key Caps
https://mechanicaps.com/product/retro-macintosh-face-key-caps/#Retro 3-in-1 #GameBoy / Calculator Interchangeable Key Caps
https://mechanicaps.com/product/retro-keycaps-3-in-1-macintosh-keycap/ -
https://github.com/xero/aks068-via
i fixed the via programming files for the AKS068 alice/arisu keyboard. hope it helps someone. #mechanicalkeyboards #mechkeebs #keebs #keyboards #alice #clacks #geekhack #via #usevia