The keyboard thread.
Not the musical kind, but the one you use to interface with your computer.
This is the one computer accessory that you use every day and your hands are always using. A good one can last a life time.
The quirk is that it is completely subjective as to what type you enjoy using the most.
Archived posts -
I’ve been using a membrane tenkeyless recently to see if I can deal with data input and program controls without my numpad to allow the keyboard to be more centred with the monitor and have the mouse in close reach. I switched back to my full sized Das Keyboard for a day and couldn’t deal with either the mouse being too far to the right or the home row off to the left.
I’m considering buying a mechanical switch tenkeyless keyboard and possibly even considering a 60% keyboard (no numpad, no arrow keys, nav cluster or function keys), where you have access to these not so often used keys using function layers. Common ones you may or may not have seen are the Vortex Pok3r and Happy Hacking Keyboards. The whole point of these keyboards is to not need to move from the home row (similar to the VIM philosophy).
I fell down a deep well in keyboard geekery forums and found that most of the best keyboards come in kits and need you to solder them together and customise your preferred switch type with the style of keycaps and plastic used. I haven’t soldered electronics in decades now so can’t see myself buying a soldering iron setup to make a keyboard.
Amongst the enthusiast community it seems that most all Cherry switches (except Cherry Clears) are manufactured with better materials by a Chinese company - Gateron. Gaterons are Cherry MX switch clones but feel better to use and are cheaper to buy (other clones are pretty terrible apparently).
So for my next board I’ll likely be looking for either Cherry MX clear or Gateron blue switches in a 60% format to see if I can deal with it. Many of the smaller sized keyboards are completely programmable so you may have a layer where an entire snippet of code or writing or program specific shortcut is bound. Or you may want to swap the control with Caps lock or remove caps lock from the standard layer completely or you want your arrow keys to be the same as how they are on VIM but across all your different OS’s as it’s stored on the keyboard.