There are other worthy clicky keyboards, but the IBM model M series with the buckling spring keyswitches are classic kit for good reason. I am surprised, though, that the Verge’s research skipped right over my favourite evangelist of the model M. So, I have to say it: that “limited supply” of model M keyboards, you can chalk a good chunk of that supply limitation up to Daniel Rutter. Dan’s reviews/tributes to the model M have been guiding the rubber-dome-using masses into typing enlightenment since 1999. They have always featured copious information on how to find one, new or used, classic or strange, be it through Unicomp, the Clicky Keyboards store/museum, or eBay and other junk shops.

My clicky keyboard conversion is certainly all Dan’s fault — who can resist an opening like this?

I know it’s wrong to get excited about a keyboard. I feel so dirty. But I can’t help it. The object of my perverse desire is an IBM model 42H1292 buckling-spring 101 key industrial heavy duty keyboard, available from www.pckeyboard.com for $US49 (versus a full retail price more like $US69). Don’t accidentally go to pckeyboards.com; that’s Wombat Keyboards, whose products may well be excellent but who are not the guardians of the One True Keyboard.

…They’ve got not-too-light but not-too-heavy key weighting, they’ve got the kind of positive click that I imagine you’d feel on the firing button for the Death Star’s primary armament, and their demonstrated service life, despite extraordinary abuse, is preposterously long. Essentially, if you don’t take to one of these things with a hammer, it’ll probably outlast you, even if you spend all day, every day, typing.

Dan’s biting humour, fascinating links, and joy in computer hardware had me reading the archives and reading anything he writes ever since. He almost talked broke teenage me into attempting overclocking; I still have the copper heatsinks to show for it. (I knew how to do basic internal work on computers at the time, but overclocking CPUs was several levels beyond that. Insert “in the snow uphill both ways backwards” speech here on how much harder that was then.)

How can one but admire anybody willing to send that tongue-in-cheek-yet-completely-serious paean of buckling spring lust out into the ether? I type a lot, since approximately age 13. Could a keyboard really be that good? I had to know, so I went hunting in the bins at the computer junk shops. After several twitchy AT-plug antiques, I lucked into a model M with plug-in PS/2 cable from 1988 for $5, which worked perfectly after ridding it of germs. I loved it. I have never bought a better piece of computer gear, not even my almost-as-beloved Macbook Pro, and may not for several decades more. One of my only serious regrets about getting the Mac was giving up my model M. The Mac had no PS/2 port, but even if I had gotten an adapter, the keyboard was a 101-key model from the DOS era. For use with Windows, that was fine. For use with Mac OS? Not fine. I actually use the option key.

I handed over my IBM to my fiancé with ceremony and dire warnings that he had to treat it right or else I’d take it back. He appreciated it sufficiently to allow his continued possession. Later, while jonesing for the keyfeel of yore but limited in desk space, I sprung for the smaller, prettier Japanese-made option: a Filco Majestouch tenkeyless with Cherry brown mechanical switches. Very nice ’board; I recommend it. But it’s not a model M. Perhaps I should have gotten the clickier blue switches?

For your delectation, Dan wrote a couple more articles in the mid-2000s on IBM’s battleship ’boards — so called for being battleship tough and battleship ugly, I assume:

• http://www.dansdata.com/clickykeyboards.htm: “Computer users are used to hardware that’s worthless in three years and useless in five; clicky keyboards aren’t like that. You could leave one of these things to your children in your will. Or be buried with it, like some kind of nerd Pharaoh. I haven’t decided which way to go with mine.”
• http://www.dansdata.com/clicky2.htm: “The cheapness of rubber dome switches means you can get a low profile keyboard that lights up for the same price as a stack of a hundred CD-Rs. [more examples] …But all of these keyboards, all of them, feel like typing on a dishcloth compared with any proper clicky ’board.”

It is much, much easier now to get a good new mechanical keyboard than when Dan started writing about them, and there is still at least some old stock floating around. (There’ll be old stock until we find every last abandoned 1980s to mid-90s machine in our collective attics.) Sure, the original model Ms will run out, but Unicomp has the machinery and is still manufacturing.

There are enthusiast keyboards with Alps switches, Topre, and many-coloured varieties of Cherry. There are forums that will teach you more about keyboards than you ever knew there was to learn. Today’s mechanical keyboards are marketed by geeks for geeks, tools for professionals and enthusiasts. Take a look at this one by DAS Keyboard. Be prepared to spend $200 and not regret a penny of it. I would peg the mechanical keyboard revival on the confluence of geek culture, gamer culture, and internet/blogging culture, all of which involve extensive typing by picky people with disposable income. Geeks optimize things. It’s what we do. Why wouldn’t we optimize the user interface between us and our machines? We spend a lot of time typing. In fact, why are you still typing on some horrible spongy thing? Respect your fingers. Don’t you write enough email to justify the purchase?

Some mechanical keyboards, like those by Datamancer, are artisanal, with commensurate pricing. Maybe someday when I’m filthy rich I’ll get one.

But for myself, right now, although I’m typing on my Filco, nostalgia has me wanting my model M back, or its Unicomp grandchild, even if it will look bizarre next to my Macbook Pro, and weighs nearly as much as the laptop. There’s nothing quite like the feel or the sound of those buckling spring keyswitches in a marathon writing session at 2 a.m.

{Title image from — where else? — Clicky Keyboards.}