On The Death of Keyboards
So, I'm not saying that I think keyboards are on their way out. Rather, this is a little story about the death of my desktop's keyboard and its replacement. I've been using my trusty Corsair K65 keyboard for many years as my go to solution for gaming/engineering/writing. It was great. No flex, red switches, ALL THE RGB.
But It was not without its issues. The LED controller had some annoying hum. It took TWO usb ports. The textured backplane was an UTTER PAIN to clean. Still, it was mine and I used it with joy.
And then the worse happened.
The RGB traces started to fail. Which is apparently a thing that they are prone to do. But it meant that it was time to hunt for a replacement.
This mean a trip into the depths of the Mechanical Keyboard hobby. After much hunting, much searching, much talking to people as nerdy as me, it came down to three possible solutions.
A custom Keeb This one was attractive. It means a project, a casing that fits my needs, exactly the style I like. But, it was not cheap. It was on the order of three to four times more expensive that the other options I looked at.
Ducky Channel One 2 TKL Skyline Upsides: really sex, Ducky quality, and the price was right. Downside? The case has a weird flex where the two base layers meet just near the space bar. while it might never happen, it would drive me NUTS knowing its there.
Varmilo + Ducky MIYA Pro Moonlight Downsides: no function keys and the worry of SMD LEDs. Upsides? Look, style, keys, and most of all, a bullet proof case.
It was a real difficult choice between the two pre-built keyboards. The Skyline is one hell of a nice looking piece of kit. The two tone base real amazing looking too. But that flex killed it.
Meaning I just used 330 words to say I'm getting a Varmilo + Ducky MIYA Pro Moonlight with Cherry MX brown switches.