I love my new keyboard

For a long time, I’ve had one of those Microsoft ergonomic keyboards with the split-hand layout. It worked reasonably well for me; I haven’t ever been terribly picky about my PC peripherals. Although the hardware still works fine, it’s developed an unfortunate shedding problem. The foam handrest is covered in this thin pleather-type skin that comes off in little pieces.

I didn’t really want to give it up as long as it still worked fine. I tried to remove the foam, but the keyboard is quite resistant to being opened up, and there's no clear way to remove just that. I eventually got sick of having these little pieces of plastic whatever sticking to my hands all the time. I started dreaming about getting a new keyboard.

Since it’s something I’ll use every day for work, I wanted to get a keyboard I enjoyed using, maybe one that was a little stylish, even. So I thought I’d give mechanical keyboards a try. They’re supposed to be more fun to type on, and they tend to have an aesthetic edge on non-mechanicals.

I did a good bit of searching and research, and I learned a bit about mechanical keyboards along the way. Some boards are hot-swappable, which means you can change out the switches without soldering. Switches are the part of each key that actually detects your keypress, and they come with different mechanical actions, coded by color: e.g., red for linear (smooth action), blue for clicky, and brown for tactile (I think that’s somewhere between the other two). I wanted something on the quieter side, so went with red switches for mine.

I knew I didn’t need hot-swapping, nor did I need backlights for the keys. Ruling out boards with those features meant I could find one I was happy with at a really good price, relatively speaking. Best of all, I was able to find one in a special retro color scheme I found really appealing.

The keyboard arrived a few weeks ago now, and I’ve just been more happy with it the more I’ve used it. It feels so nice to type on. The action is so smooth, and it only takes a light touch to trigger a key, so I can really fly on it, especially with keyboard shortcuts.

Best of all, I really like the way it looks. It’s fun to look down at it every so often while working and see this cool, aesthetic rectangle. I do think having nicer things for my everyday office use probably has a bit of a positive impact on my attitude, on the whole.

Do you own a mechanical keyboard? What kind do you have? What kind of switches? What color? How do you like it? Do you have something else you use every day that delights you? Let me know your thoughts at my Ctrl-C email: gome ​@ ​ctrl-c.club.