Deskthority Awards 2018: the Winners!

[kbdfr]

Spoiler:

Do they exist in ISO?

If they did nobody would buy them.... ISO sucks!

[Findecanor]

Won the SK630 from Cooler Master

Spoiler:

Might look nice with Cherry original doubleshots

I wonder if keycaps made for Cherry M8 would fit Cherry MXLP.

Spoiler:

But I don't have my hopes up. The new switches are a bit wide on top.

[matt3o]

Do they exist in ISO?

if you want I can make it happen, but it involves some frankenkeyboarding

[kbdfr]

Do they exist in ISO?

if you want I can make it happen, but it involves some frankenkeyboarding

Don't start with it yet

[matt3o]

to all the winners, if you want your prize please send me your address asap (unless you already did).

@kbdfr, I have a prototype ISO (fully functional) and an ANSI. If you want I can do some magic and transform the ANSI into an ISO, but you gotta tell me fast.

[kbdfr]

@matt3o
Sorry, please do nothing of the kind, it was just a joke (all 4 spoilers in my previous post were jokes ).

I have PM’d another prize winner to ask if interested in a swap, no answer received yet.

As thankful to the sponsor and as happy of winning I am,
there’s no way I am going to keep such a keyboard which has all the following:
it is small, it is backlighted, it is black, it has no numpad.
And obviously some would ask me to write a review

So I’ll have to decide what happens with the keyboard if the other prize winner declines (which I would sadly understand).

(If anyone dares send me a PM to get it from me: you would irrevocably exclude yourself )

[matt3o]

I'll make a review

[Muirium]

Keyboardco shipped out my Filco Majestouch 2 today. Giving it its first spin here just now. First impressions are pretty good. Out of the box, it reminds me quite a bit of the CM Novatouch—black slab, no nonsense around the edges, no configurability either, and iffy caps!—but the switches are very different indeed. I requested MX silent reds (MX pink as Keyboardco called them!) and even with stock caps they’re pretty damn nice. The closest MX that I’ve ever felt compared to Topre. Classy! It’s a lot more like a NovaTouch *after* you’ve gone to all the bother of fitting damping rings. Must say I quite like this.

I’ll give it a good shakedown, and prise the caps (and Costar stab inserts) off so I can give it a whirl in something more my style. Pics and opinions will follow. But initial impressions are good.

I’ve actually been after a Majestouch for years. It was one of the first mechs I ever heard of, and I remember likely asking about it in my very first post at DT. I went a different path, but I’m glad we meet at last. Especially with these newfangled damped MX switches.

Now, about that conveniently modular controller… I think I may have something in mind.

[Hypersphere]

@Mu: Congratulations on winning the Filco Majestouch 2 with Silent Reds! If you had to get a Cherry mx board, it might as well be the purely linear variety that is what Cherry does best. I've also heard good things about silent Reds and even better praise for silent Blacks switches.

Your story of entering the [contemporary] mech world is similar to mine. In my case,I'd been using an IBM Model M at work, but being bothered by "mouse shoulder", I was looking for a more compact board. I was also curious to see what contemporary mechanical keyboards were like. The Filco Majestouch 2 was recommended, and so I bought a Ninja Stealth model with mx Blues. My initial reaction was surprise and disappointment. The Filco was solidly built, but it seemed like a toy compared to my Model M. I dressed it up with a beautiful Olivetti set from Originative. It looked nice, but the Blues sounded like somene else muching Rice Krispies, and the tatile event was a half-hearted afterthought.

From time to time, I have sampled the ever-expanding mx universe. Present-day Cherry Reds seem a bit scratchy and Blacks are a tad heavy. Among linears, I found that Gateron Yellows are smooth and ideally weighted.

Having heard raves about the new Silent Reds and even newer Silent Blacks, and seeing reports that silent Blacks were not as heavy as the non-silent version, I wanted to try them, but not many ready-made boards featured them. I've also found purely linear switches rather unexciting, so I tried mx attempts at grafting tactility onto their switches. Browns do indeed feel iikey gritty Reds, and for one who likes to bottom-out his keystrokes, mx Clears feel like trying to get a few more pounds of pressure into a fully inflated tire using a hand-pump.

However, I picked up a DIY kit for a HHKB-layout board with a hot-swappable PCB. I installed a new variety of silent and tactile mx clone billed as a kinder, gentler mx clear with non-mushy silencing -- ZealPC's "Zilent" switches. I opted for the 67g variety.

My impression of the Zilents was similar to your assessment of mx silent Reds. With the agreeable tactility and the effective up and down silencing, the experience was the closest to silenced Topre I've found outside of silenced Topre itself. And, of course with mx and its clones, there is no shortage of keycaps!

Another thing in favor of mx is that I have never had a problem with binding or chattering as I have with vintage Alps (alas, I do not have the luck of Chyros in having pristine Alps boards fall into my hands from Heaven) and sometimes with new Matias switches.

We are all waiting for your video review of your new Filco -- with audio, of course -- we understand that we might have to crank up the volume to detect their feeble heartbeats.

[Muirium]

Video? I'll type it and you'll like it!

(Don't really have the setup for video. Just a phone and the weak winter solstice light. Besides, it's something I'm not practiced in. Much cosier with stills and words, even if I can give Chyros a run for soothing baritone profanities.)

I knew the Costar stabs would be fiddly buggers. But I didn't realise they were as loose in all my caps. Been trying vintage Cherry caps, DSA and SA, thick and thin, PBT and ABS, and they're all much looser with those heinous wee inserts than Filco's own caps. There's a trick I'm missing, surely? Even when I do get a stabilised key seated on them and its switch, it's just not *stabilised* right. Needs more friction.

Typing in the quiet of night, I'm hearing more of the good old Filco ring now too. It's not the quietest keyboard, clearly louder than a damped NovaTouch or my HHKB Type-S. Damped Topre is quite exceptional. But sure, compared even to plain old MX red (in a plate like this), the silents are a whisper.

[Daniel]

Congratulations to all the winners. And a big thanks towards Matteo. This forum is such a nice place as people like you invest their spare time to make things like the Deskthority Awards happen.

[Muirium]

So, I did actually shoot a video review. I pulled out the Filco and several other boards to make comparisons about MX and Topre, damping and undamped, and wound up chatting away for 24 minutes without a script! Just listened to it and it’s decent enough, more like a keyboard lecture than a review but I reckon it’s worth a watch.

Trouble is, that’s apparently too long for YouTube? How am I supposed to share it?

[Anakey]

it will be fine for youtube you just need to verify with your e-mail i guess you could try the temporary 15min e-mail accounts just to verify

[Muirium]

Yeah I’ll try uploading it from my Mac. That error was when I tried direct from my phone. Hopefully shall have it available to watch later when I’m back home.

[andrewjoy]

Yeah I’ll try uploading it from my Mac. That error was when I tried direct from my phone. Hopefully shall have it available to watch later when I’m back home.

Try from windows or linux.

That will work even better

[matt3o]

don't open that door, please

[Wodan]

REAL MEN USE VIM ON ANDROID!

[Muirium]

…while fighting a bear with the other hand.

I’ve never been all that into “manly” anyway. Much rather use something nice than administer my own punishment. There’s much more fun sources for all that!

[Wodan]

How did this community survive during your absence?

[depletedvespene]

It didn't. This is an undead forum, running in the depths of hell.net, attracting and keeping in the hungry ghosts that are desperate to be satiated by the destruction in our quests to build an "endgame" keyboard that is simultaneously modern and vintage, cool-looking and office-appropriate, ergonomic and traditionally shaped, enormous and compact, with switches that are loudly silent, clickily linear, light and heavy, and with a long, long lifetime (as we're in this for eternity).

Or something like that.

[Laser]

Congratulations all, from those who put the elbow grease, to those who got lucky.

[__red__]

REAL MEN USE VIM ON ANDROID!

Real men use ed on a PDP/11 at 110 baud by tapping the TX line with their fingers and reading the RX line with their tongue.

[matt3o]

I had a friend who was able to debug code by listening to the PC beeper tonal fluctuations (this is actually a true story)

[chuckdee]

REAL MEN USE VIM ON ANDROID!

Real men use ed on a PDP/11 at 110 baud by tapping the TX line with their fingers and reading the RX line with their tongue.

ed's dead, baby. ed's dead.

[Engicoder]

I had a friend who was able to debug code by listening to the PC beeper tonal fluctuations (this is actually a true story)

I had a problem about 20 years ago where I had to use subtle variations in drive light activity as part of my debugging for a file replication problem. Of course this was back in the day when the OS hadn't rendered the drive light meaningless.

[matt3o]

ah the good old days

[Muirium]

Ugh… YouTube.

Screenshot 2018-12-11 at 10.37.25 am.png (49.37 KiB) Viewed 33284 times

That's after I verified my account (which required a phone number, not an email by the way). YouTube claims you get an Activate button once you've done that:

Your video exceeds the maximum video length for unverified accounts. To fix this, just verify your account, then activate this video in your Video Manager—you don't have to upload the video again. Verify account

Do you fuck.

I'd rather not chop it in two because I barely pause for breath throughout, so it'd be a really janky cut! And the bastard took bloody hours to upload, thanks to my filming it in 4K. It's 8 gigs!

…

Doing the log in / log out dance, I haven't solved it. But I can see where their breakage is:

Screenshot 2018-12-11 at 10.45.48 am.png (20.75 KiB) Viewed 33277 times

<Click>

Screenshot 2018-12-11 at 10.45.59 am.png (5.69 KiB) Viewed 33277 times

Bastards!

[matt3o]

put it on internet archive. it's free.

[Muirium]

But not embeddable at DT. Another item for your todo list of pain!

I’ll try uploading it all over again later. Grumbling throughout.

[Hypersphere]

You could try editing. ;-|