Ah yes!! I too have the Cherry MX Brown. A Corsair K70. From the reading I did, that sounded like the best combination of clickiness and other attributes for my usage (not gaming, but a LOT of keyboarding for work).
Interestingly, some joint pain I’d developed in my left index finger (distal joint bad enough to wake me at times, proximal less severe) got a LOT better after I switched to it. My theory is that I tend to pound on keyboards, and since these keys have more play in them, I don’t bottom out / have as much of a shock as with a generic keyboard.
There are loads of novelty key caps available for these on Etsy, if a bit spendy (and a lot of them look terribly impractical). Might be fun to replace a couple of them to make specific keys stand out a bit more.
Out of curiosity, what (if anything) do those terms refer to? For the princely sum of CAD $240, I can get a K95 “Cherry MX Silver”, but the “Brown” is even more. I know that Amazon is notorious for charging wildly different prices for trivial cosmetic variations. For instance, significantly different prices for Western Digital “My Passport” 2 TB external portable HDDs where the only difference is the colour of the plastic case. (I have many of them and used to use the colour to distinguish different purposes, but now I just buy the cheapest – usually black – and stick Dymo labels on them!)
Also, what’s this about “clickiness”? Do the Corsair keyboards make mechanical clicking sounds like the old IBM PC keyboards? I prefer silent keyboards, but that’s just me.
Different types of switches have a different tactile feel. There’s no one that’s objectively better, but different users may have different preferences. The difference I believe is in how far you must push the key before it hits the board, as well as how much resistance you get from the key. These switches are universal on mechanical keyboards. I’ve tried red switches which are not uncommon in gaming (hard pass) and speed switches (this might be strictly a Corsair thing. I really enjoyed them, but they were so fast I made way too many errors.) The MX Cherry Brown are most frequently recommended for writers. Based on what I’ve tried, they are definitely the best fit for me.
There was an excellent post on this subject recently. I’ll see if I can find it.
And yes, mechanical keyboards are noisy. Some are worse than others. The reds were the noisiest.
There are many other brands of mechanical keyboard besides Corsair. Corsair is specifically in the business of gaming.
The “color” is meaningless as far as I can tell - they just chose to name the various switches with those color names. I have not pried up keys to see whether there is actually a “brown” component to the thing. I have had teammates “silence” me on conference calls, because mine is fairly loud. Though I do have a tendency to be hard enough on a keyboard where even before I got this keyboard, people would ask me if I had a mechanical one.
The linked article mentions alternatives to several of the types. I would not recommend spending the cash on such a keyboard without at least trying out something similar in real life. Of course, I bought mine as a leap of faith, never having tried one, but I wanted something with backlit keys (easier to see if light is not optimal) and the ability to be able to label specific keys with different colors was a real plus. Other manufacturers use the same switches; Corsair is not the only one out there.
Be aware that many of these keyboards require two USB connections - mine does. It also does not play well with most inexpensive KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switches: I had to plug mine into a powered USB hub and plug THAT into the KVM switch, and keyboard-based switching does not work - which is a significant inconvenience for me. I’m debating whether to shell out 150 bucks for a KVM switch that claims it will support that.
Thanks to all for the detailed information. Definitely learned a lot as I had no idea keyboards had such esoteric variations! I also discovered (via their website) that my local computer store has quite a large number of keyboards in stock in all price ranges, including Corsair, Logitech, and many other brands, ranging in price from sub-$20 to well over $300. Definitely worth a look.
When you spend 8+ hours a day writing, it doesn’t feel like such a big expenditure. I used to work all day grant writing and come home and spend the rest of the night writing fiction. In that context you just really need the most comfortable option. I do game occasionally, but the true motive for spending extra was the RGB backlighting. I love the colors, and it’s not uncommon I find myself writing in dim light.
If you’re not a gamer, this is the best mechanical keyboard you can get, for half the price of a Corsair.
Das Keyboard 4 Professional for Mac Wired Mechanical Keyboard, Cherry MX Brown Mechanical Switches, 2-Port USB 3.0 Hub, Volume Knob, Aluminum Top (104 Keys, Black) https://a.co/d/e7l4qpB
Just had a random idea, and wasn’t sure where to drop it. Decided my fellow mini-ranters could use an extra million or two.
In the Vegan Butter thread, they said ordinary margarine could be labeled vegan. So my idea, available for anyone here to steal and make a quick fortune, is… relabel ordinary products as Vegan, or Free Range, or Locally Sourced, or Organic. Even though they already are.
If you’re really ambitious, start a shop (local, but you might end up with tiny stores nation-wide). I’d call mine Good 4 U or some such… but this post is work enough for me.
I was walking Simi on a local trail early Saturday morning. We came across a woman looking at some plants and her field guide. She asked me if I knew the name of the weed growing alongside the trail. “Sure, it’s knot-weed”. To which she replied, “well, what is it then?”
I thought she hadn’t heard me so I repeated, “It’s knot-weed”. And she asked again, “well, what is it called?” looking at me like I was not all there.
Finally I realized what was going on. “It’s knot-weed. K N O T weed”.
“AKA Japanese Knot-Weed”. Wish I’d known the genus/species at the time.
I already see “gluen free” used this way quite a lot.
My food-related rant is celery and broccoli. Locally, all the stores cut off the celery leaves before putting the celery out—which is fine unless you want to make soup. Similarly, broccoli is now only sold as broccoli crowns. If you want the stalks, you must go to five different stores before finally finding some organic broccoli with stalks.
It’s like people who sell food ingredients don’t cook.
But what if I want my life to be a '70s sitcom? I have to walk into my house via the unlocked sunny breakfast nook, with a baguette and an eruption of celery leaves sticking out the top of my one grocery bag!
I remember a decade or so ago, when my local store installed a bunch of “healthy tags” on the shelves near various foods. Next to the Toll House chocolate chips was the tag: “low salt”.
I’m the OP of that thread. The vegan butter I saw today costs more than regular butter, and is double the price of margarine. So you’re up to something, but someone stole your idea.
ETA: but there’s the danger that you can confuse some of the customers. My parents who are both in their eighties, though still quite well informed and mentally agile, but some concepts they don’t really get anymore. I was having breakfast the other day at my parents, and my father who does all the grocery shopping showed me a glass of mustard or pickles or something (I don’t remember exactly, but some food that has always been vegan) and asked “It says ‘vegan’ on the lid. What does that mean? Have I grabbed the wrong item?” My parents only have a vague notion what “vegan” means, so they thought they bought the wrong variety, though they bought the same food from the same brand they had used for decades, only with the new label “vegan”.
Once again, I wonder if @Spice_Weasel and I are twins separated by a decade or two! Though I don’t write fiction and I don’t do the sort of gaming that requires such a keyboard… But I DO spend a lot of time working on a computer (minimum 8 hours per workday). I never realized how much better an external keyboard would be, until I needed a setup for multiple computers at once. I was using a generic, nonbacklit wired keyboard at first - and thus the backlighting was the first thing that got me looking at the gaming keyboards, and I was surprised at how much better I like typing on this thing. The repetitive stress pain improvement was a complete and very welcome surprise.
In any case, 150 bucks or whatever we spent on this, given the amount of time I spend on it, is proving to be well worth it. It was paid for by “so you’re working at home, here’s a little money to help set up your home office” funds, and in theory we’d have to return it to the company if the job ends; at which point I’m shelling out for one I can keep (the hope is, the company really won’t want the thing back).
Oh, and because this is the Pit, gotta complain about one aspect of this keyboard: the “shift” characters appear on the keycaps BELOW the main character, not above them - and as large as the main character. So instead of the more common
&
7
it has
7
&
Which is less confusing for the number keys, than the ones with just characters such as
,
<
or
[
{
In theory, I might be able to find a different keycap set with a more standard look, but I’m mostly used to it now.
I dislike the broccoli stalks so I was happy with the crowns, but now I see that you can find the stalks all juilienned as “broccoli slaw”. I scored one of those at the food shelf and discovered that they cook well for stir-fry and such like. So now I know what to do with the stems when I go to the co-op that doesn’t sell crown-only broccoli. I agree with you on the celery and other items that are trimmed up. That’s part of the reason to get to the farm market or co-op. They don’t prettify the food to f-uck so you can make use of the non-standard bits.
One time I asked my neighbor if he knew the type of tree in his yard. He said, “Pearlwood.” I asked, “Pearlwood?” He answered, “Yeah, pearlwood.” I asked, “What kind of a tree is pearlwood??” He answered, “No, you have to ask Pearl [his wife] what kind of tree it is!”
