Mechanical Keybaord Hunt!

Eamonn Brophy

I'm very interested in obtaining an old IBM model M or similar. I'm located in the Galway area and willing to pay good money for one in any condition (as long as it's still working).

If you have/know of anyone with one of these, please contact me or reply to this thread.

Also, does anyone know of any other way I could possibly get my hand on one of these?

I know that there must be loads of them neglected and gathering dust, or being simply thrown away and it's frustrating!

Does anyone here have much experience with Mechanical keyboards? What do you make of them?

nesf

Have a SteelSeries 7G. A very good keyboard, a little bigger than I'd like but works well.

No idea where you'd find the IBM keyboard unfortunately but there's a quite good selection of new mechanicals out there with SteelSeries, Corsair and Razor all offering ones among the big names.

John mac

whats a Mechanical keyboard?
compared to the keyboard i'm using now?

nesf

John mac wrote: »

whats a Mechanical keyboard?
compared to the keyboard i'm using now?

It comes down to the switch underneath the keys. In a mechanical keyboard it's a mechanical switch. In a normal keyboard it's a silicone dome. Silicone domes are softer to type on, give less resistance and so on but are no where near as hard wearing. Mechanical switches are stiffer, have more resistance (varies according to switch type) and last forever practically speaking.

Some people prefer typing on mechanicals, some people prefer them because there's far, far less of a chance of a key going in them (can happen if you game a lot because you'll tend to use WSAD and a few other keys a lot).

Other factors come into it like ghosting (how many keys the keyboard can report when they're pressed at the same time) and how deep you need to press the key to register a keystroke, on a silicone dome it's fully down on a mechanical a half press or less can register.

I hope that explains things.

John mac

Thanks. that would explain why I'm still using my gateway 12year old keyboard.

nesf

John mac wrote: »

Thanks. that would explain why I'm still using my gateway 12year old keyboard.

Here's a nice roundup of a few different mechanicals for gaming purposes: http://www.technobuffalo.com/gaming/top-5-gaming-keyboards-mechanical-edition/

nesf

Oh and if you've a toddler who's good at removing keys from a keyboard you can just push them back in and they work perfectly with a mechanical. On a silicone keyboard it can mean the loss of a key because the switch is so easy to damage if you remove the keys in the wrong way.

And if you think you can always get there before your toddlers gets a key off a keyboard then you don't have kids!