a tactile keyboard with soft keys

[The Solutor]

The cherry keyboards were considered an upgrade to the standard IBM keyboards 30 years ago and the situation is more or less unchanged, none of the two are perfect, but all that pleasure when typing on the BS is more matter of nostalgia than real better feeling.

Do you have some source or are you presenting your personal current opinion as a general old opinion of a larger group?

It depends, the pleasure is obviously something personal, but the perceived value of the cherry boards in the late eighties is something that you can check in any review of the time.

Still an opinion, but a widespread one.

Buckling springs were patented.

BS were a nice "MacGyver style" idea to build a cheap and reasonably effective keyboard

Cherry and Alps are alternative, cheap solutions which are unfortunately inferior by its rasping nature.

We can discuss for a whole day about the end result, but the construction of a true microswitch keyboard is anything but cheap if compared to a BS board.

You know the nice anecdotal story about the Soviet ad American astronauts and the pen used to overcome the gravity absence ?

Americans spent a lot to build a pressurized ballpoint pen, Russian used pencils.

BS is just the pencil used by Russians a cheap and effective idea.

[webwit]

It depends, the pleasure is obviously something personal, but the perceived value of the cherry boards in the late eighties is something that you can check in any review of the time.

Wait.. I have to provide your source now? But I can't, because you're making it up. There were hardly keyboard reviews at the time, and if keyboards were reviewed, separately or as part of a computer, I have never seen a professional one were they compared the feel of the switches with competing keyboards. They usually glamored over something else, such as layout or keycaps, like in the picture below. If there is one constant, it is that IBM was the trendsetter. Also there was no public opinion on these things, because no one cared. People cared about getting great machines for a low price. The idea that people buy keyboards for their Cherry switches exists for only a few years now.

ibminfoweek.jpg (279.8 KiB) Viewed 2892 times

[The Solutor]

Not the latter, remember in In Italy we had Olivetti there was almost no point in buying IBM material.

Ironically, IBM made their European beam spring keyboards in Italy.

Wheres the irony ?

You should read a bit of the Olivetti history to understand how the things worked here.

While IBM was favored in the US against the superior Olivetti products of the time because obvious protectionist reasons, in Italy IBM was often favored too as Mr Olivetti was considered "a communist" because the improvements to the worker's conditions he introduced in its plants well before they become common or enforced by laws.

So IBM did great business in the public administration sector.

Later with the advent of the PCs things changed a bit, the market was divided mostly between cheap assembled PCs and Olivetti products. IBM retained the markets had before with mainframe and minicomputers.

Also don't forget that IBM was considered the evil before that role was taken by MS

[The Solutor]

Wait.. I have to provide your source now?

I can provide anything you want but not *now* my huge collection of technical magazines is archived in the basement now, and I don't have a search engine for paper based data, but I'll surely search in the near future.

There were hardly keyboard reviews at the time, and if keyboards were reviewed, separately or as part of a computer

Surely the fetishism seen on GH or DT was unknown, and hardly the keyboards were reviewed as stand alone peripherals.

But the keyboard quality was mentioned by any serious reviewer, and the Cherry boards were advertised more than today.

IBM keyboard were mentioned, as in the article you attached, more because a novelty in the layout than because their quality.

[webwit]

I wonder if we have scared away the OP yet.

[daedalus]

I don't suppose that any of this review stuff is in any way to do with the fact that IBM keyboards were bundled with IBM computers, and not sold separately until the mid-90s, by which time most people were into rubber domes?

But there are of course plenty of reviews of IBM systems where people praise the buckling spring keyboards that they use, so I'm not sure sure where you are going with all of this.

[The Solutor]

I wonder if we have scared away the OP yet.

[The Solutor]

But there are of course plenty of reviews of IBM systems where people praise the buckling spring keyboards that they use

Why they shouldn't

[The Solutor]

We scared at least HP, they decided to spin off the PC/Smartphone/Tablet division...

[daedalus]

They seem to be planning on getting rid of their PC division.

Not a terrible loss, they haven't churned out much of note since the PA-RISC days.

[naisanza]

Today, I saw ndp's keyboard collection. I thank him here for allowing me to test his keyboards.

Here is my recollection:

1. I hated Cherry brown switches, they does not sound even like a good switch, I thought my 20 Euro keyboard has more refined keys

2. I liked cheery reds (well, home made one), feels much better when pressed, my second favourite

3. Did not like alps keys (I tried two of them), both are a bit stiff for me

4. I loved his little topre keyboard. This is really surprising for me. Because, I am by no means a keyboard enthusiast, and, thought that is was a little over-hyped. Because that is what enthusiasts usually do. But, it truly has the most refined key-press I experienced on any keyboard. The problem I have is it is a bit too expensive.
So, in the end, it seems I'll settle with a keyboard using cherry red switches (or perhaps order full size a topre board, still thinking about it)

Cheers,
K.

I am sorry to bump a post that's a year old, but I did a search and your experience seems similar to someone I would want to ask this question to. Did you choose to settle with cherry red switches because they felt more closely to topre's than the browns? I haven't tried browns before, but I would think it would be the closest feeling to topres because it has tactile and it's light, as compared to reds which are just light and linear without that tactile feel to it that topre's do.

Thanks

[bhtooefr]

And I've read reviews of older NON-IBM systems where the reviewer lamented the keyboard, and wished it felt like the IBM one. (Granted, those reviews were in the XT days.)

Anyway, it's worth trying a Model F, if you can get your hands on one. Not low force, but low preload, which can feel like low force in the right conditions.

[TotalChaos]

Cherry and Alps are alternative, cheap solutions which are unfortunately inferior by its rasping nature. This design is a sacrifice between vertical compactness and limited cost on one hand, and quality on the other. I.e. its problems are by design.

Could you please define "rasping nature"?

Do you refer to friction inside the switch? Or ?