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Das Keyboard arrived on my doorstep and I’ve just plugged it in to my Mac. It’s LOUD! And it’s a real keyboard! I really do feel myself speeding up as I type.

I have a Mac Pro. I don’t for the life of me understand why Apple would ship a $3,000 computer with a mediocre keyboard, but that’s what they do. I’m sure Apple won some sort of design award for their keyboard, but my fingers hate it. The function keys are too close to the top row, so I can’t find the backspace key. And there’s something wrong with how the rollover works.

Das Keyboard, on the other hand, is a throwback, especially the “Professional” model I bought. It’s not much more or less than a classic desktop keyboard with LOUD mechanical switches, multikey rollover, and a really confident touch. It seems impossible to miskey a key with this thing.

Researchers have noticed that people tend to hit the CLEAR button on a calculator two or three times “just to make sure” it’s really clear. It’s because people can’t quite tell how calculators work and the extra presses seem to work in all cases. I know I was doing weird things on my old Mac keyboard (and even in my older Logitech keyboard) because I wasn’t sure if a key was really pressed or not.

There’s no ambiguity on Das Keyboard. You type a key and you know it. You can hear the switch pop, almost like a light switch. If you press it part way down, you can hear it engage when it’s moved far enough. Or you can “Punch the Keys” just like on a classic mechanical keyboard. If you punch the keys, you hit bottom and are rewarded with a really satisfying click.

My only worry is when my wife comes home. Is she going to say I’m too loud?

Key Markings

The folks at Das Keyboard sell two models. The “Professional” model is a typical upscale PC-style keyboard with all the keys you’d expect, marked in white on matte black keys. There are little ridges on the near edge of the F and J keys so you can find them by touch.

The “Ultimate” model is shipped without any markings on the key caps. I thought about buying one, partly because the vendor claims that people type even faster when the keys aren’t marked. Personally I don’t really need the markings. I know this because I’ve had to use foreign-marked keyboards with US software: the keys were marked with the foreign layout but the software assumed the keys were where my fingers expected them to be.

However, I decided on the marked version since other people occasionally use this computer, and not all of them are touch typists.

Another thing: the “command” key is swapped with the “alt/option” key compared to the Mac keyboard. This is worth getting used to, since I tend to use PC keyboards in other places anyway.

Not all boomers can touch type

When I was a kid, hardly anyone learned touch typing, especially among college bound kids. The only people who learned typing were girls who were going to be secretaries and other people anticipating clerical jobs. But my mom insisted I learn, probably because she kept her family fed during the Depression through her typing skills. None of us, including my dad, who was a pioneer in the computing industry, anticipated how important typing would be to someone in the computing business.

My wife, thank goodness, also learned. She’s not extremely fond of computers, but she’s very proficient with them, mostly because of touch typing.

Posted under Household Tech |