It seems technology is moving forward in great leaps and bounds with new processors, graphics cards, hard drives, etc. coming out all the time, so it’s easy to miss something that was right in front of you the whole time, your keyboard. The most common being a rubber dome keyboard which are very cheap to produce and ‘do the job’. Problem is even most ‘high end’ keyboards have these cheap rubber domes which are only intended to last a couple of years. So why a mechanical keyboard?

The mechanical keyboard uses mechanical switches, currently the more common being Cherry switches, but there are other types. Unlike the rubber dome which pops the key back up after it is pressed the Cherry switch uses a spring (rubber vs. metal in other words). This means a longer, more accurate and consistent life for the keyboard and your hands. The spring is combined with a metal (normally gold plated) contact to create the switch and increase their accuracy. There are different kinds of Cherry switches and these are denoted by a colour (black, brown, blue, etc.). Each colour has different characteristics to suit different users as below.

Black: These Cherry switches range of forces required to press them from lighter to stiffer than a rubber dome and don’t click on the way down – good for gaming
Brown: A slightly lighter press than rubber domes and make a click sound half way down to let you know the key stroke has been registered – good all rounder
Blue: The press on these Cherry switches uses a similar force as a rubber dome and they also make the click sound half way down – good for typing
Clear: Much rarer than the other three listed here, these switches have a stiffer feel than a rubber dome and also click on the way down – good all rounder

From research it seems the first mechanical keyboard was made by none other than Apple (Steve Jobs strikes again) and is still used today by some. Dating back to the late 1980’s this is a true testament to the durability of the mechanical keyboard. The difference between these and the newer models on the market is the mechanical part of the switch which is said to last even longer.

Obviously since the 1980’s there have been other advances that make the modern keyboard what it is today and these are now becoming available on the mechanical keyboard. Backlighting, usb ports, headphone ports and macro keys are just some of the features currently on the market. With these features and the multiple choices of Cherry switches all that is left to decide is which one should replace those old rubber dome keyboards that ‘do the job’, well less accurately anyway.

As the major piece of input hardware on more than 99% of the worlds computers are keyboards it would seem the keyboard is also one of the most overlooked pieces of equipment. My only advise to you, the reader, is to go and try one, even just tap on the keys the next time you see one in a shop (keeping in mind the different switches and feels). If you find one you like you won’t ever go back to those rubber domes.

This message is brought to you by my fingers and a mechanical keyboard

- Kenny.

Tags: mechanical, mechanical keyboard

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2012 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.