Things We Love: Clicky Keyboards

One of the recurring conversations here at Word Lions World Headquarters in Portland, OR centers around the tools we use. How much focus on tools is helpful before diminishing returns set in? Will new tool XYZ really make a difference? In general, Joel and I love tools that do what they’re supposed to do reliably and elegantly. So I resolved to find a keyboard that helped me type reliably and elegantly.

Soylent Keyboards

The audible and tactile click of my ASK-6600 keyboard gives me absolute certainty that a keystroke has registered, and it has greatly increased my typing accuracy. While keyboards have become lighter, quieter, and easier to manufacture, they have also generally trended towards mushy and imprecise feel. My previous wireless keyboard, the Apple bluetooth keyboard, was an absolutely stunning example of visual design and high quality manufacturing but it was also an ergonomic disaster for me. Membrane keyboards like this one, and the ones many laptops are fitted with, are quiet and often beautiful but they just don’t cut the mustard for serious typists. And so I finally “downgraded” to a USB keyboard with mechanical keyswitches. It’s been one of the best computer accessory purchases I’ve ever made.

More Than One Way To Build A Keyboard

A brief digression on the topic of keyboards. Before purchasing my Solidtek ASK-6600 keyboard, I sat at the feet of the masters of keyboard minutia over at the Geekhack forum. These sweet souls love keyboards more than you or I probably ever will, and they’re not afraid to talk about it. They’ve done a lot of good work discussing the benefits of clickieness, tactility, lightness, heaviness, smoothness, and other measurable and intangible aspects of keyboard feel. While they can be fairly accused of wandering off into the dark forest of obsession, they’ve also mapped the territory of mechanical keyboards quite nicely, and for that I am grateful.

There are three major categories of keyswitches, which are the bits of machinery that sit underneath the keys (formally known as the keycaps) of a keyboard:

• Rubber dome keyswitches are the most common type used on full size desktop keyboards today. They use a rubber dome to provide resistance to keypresses, and therefore tend to have a mushy feel.
• Membrane keyswitches are the most common type used on laptop and some desktop keyboards. The keycaps in this type press down on a membrane, and these keyboards tend to have a light, delicate feel.
• Mechanical keyswitches are the least common type of keyboard today. No modern laptops use this keyswitch type, and there are a few desktop keyboards of this type available. This keyboard type has individual mechanical keyswitches under each keycap.

Although my office is a bit louder than it used to be, I’m a happier typist and a more productive Word Lion.

By the way, if you have fond memories of the IBM type M keyboard, you can still buy one! Here’s the link.

Each major category of keyswitches has numerous sub-categories. Me, I just wanted something that would be a significant improvement over the membrane keyboard I was using. Why? Well, it wasn’t necessarily because I wanted my typing to sound like a hailstorm on a tin roof (thanks for that one Andrew Plotkin!). Rather, it was because I wanted accuracy, and to a lesser extent, speed.

Accuracy Matters to Me, Noise Level Doesn’t

There are several criteria that you might judge a keyboard by. Sound, feel, speed, and accuracy are four possible ones.

• Sound: Mechanical keyswitches tend to emit a noticeable audible click when depressed. Purists debate about whether this click happens at precisely the same point as the keystroke registers on screen, but for most mechanical keyswitches, it’s very close. This audible feedback arguable helps with typing accuracy and speed. My dog, who is totally deaf, can sometimes feel the floor vibrating from the furor of my keyboard, but he doesn’t mind the noise and neither do I. Do be aware that even the most svelte mechanical keyswitch keyboard, like the oft-desired Happy Hacking Keyboard, will be louder than a membrane or rubber dome keyboard.
• Feel: The feel of a keyboard is a very personal taste. For me, I find that a solid feel with significant resistance to individual keypresses is ideal. Combined with keycaps that are curved and have edges that I can easily feel, a solid keypress allows me to type with confidence. You might think that keys with significant resistance would increase fatigue, but I have not found that to be the case.
• Speed: This one is important to many folks, but not as important to me. Even though my typing speed is considerably higher on a mechanical keyswitch keyboard, my speed on a decent rubber dome keyboard or scissor switch laptop board already outstripped the rate at which I can quickly form good sentences when doing original writing–like white papers–and so I really didn’t need a huge speed boost. That said, it’s really nice to know that the keyboard can keep up with my fingers when those flashes of insight do happen, and I want to get them into type as quickly as possible.
• Accuracy: This one is the biggie for me, and it’s the main reason I wanted to switch to a mechanical keyswitch keyboard. I’m not a great typist, but I can touch type, and I really get discouraged when my error rate is increased by a poor match between what my fingers expect and what the keyboard delivers. The worst for me is any keyboard with flat keycaps. I really rely on the slightly concave shape of each keycap to help my fingers stay in the correct position over home row so that I can touch type with greater accuracy.Furthermore, my typing accuracy is dependent on knowing when a keystroke has registered so that my fingers can move on to the next keystroke. This is an area where my mechanical keyswitch keyboard wins big over the rubber dome type. The audible and tactile click of my ASK-6600 keyboard gives me absolute certainty that a keystroke has registered, and it has greatly increased my typing accuracy.

So in conclusion, I’d like to thank whatever offshore manufacturing conglomerate makes the Solidtek ASK-6600 keyboard for creating a very nice keyboard at a good price. Although my office is a bit louder than it used to be, I’m a happier typist and a more productive Word Lion.

By the way, if you have fond memories of the IBM type M keyboard, you can still buy one! Here’s the link.