[geeks] Ergonomic keyboard styles

[Mike Meredith]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:00:05 +0200, Jonathan Groll wrote:
> of them (for now!). I suspect that buying interesting keyboards could
> become a hobby in its own right. Mrbill's Filco looks so sweet....

Indeed it's strangely seductive. I've only got two quality keyboards at
present because I'm trying to choose between a Avant Stellar, a Unicomp
Customizer 104, or a Filco Tenkeyless. And I started out looking for
just a half-decent US layout keyboard[0].

> PS Since I'm new to the keyswitch scene, how would "Tokyo Press" fit
> into the lowest to greatest scheme, eg. of such a kb: 
> http://www.elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=topre_keyboards,rftenkeyless&pid=rf_se1700
> or even the "Happy Hacker", are they merely fancy buckling spring
> keyboards?

Well first of all, not all Happy Hacker keyboards are the same; the
pros use capacitive keyswitches as your example whilst the base models
use a membrane keyswitch. Probably a quality membrane keyswitch - if
I'm permitted to use "quality" and "membrane" in the same sentence. 

Assuming the diagram on that page is accurate, the Topre keyswitch is
not a buckling spring keyswitch. And it is quite likely that the page
would be _very_ sure to emphasise that the keyswitches were buckling
keyswitches if they were. They look ok, although the only real test is
to use one and find out.

0: An oddity of mine - I like to use a US keyboard so things don't get
   quite so confusing if something doesn't get as far in booting as
   loading the local keyboard map.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains
  -- Jean Jacques Rousseau