[bensherman]

I have one, and I love it. It's loud, feels great and the dipswitch settings on it make me not have to worry about any software to make it work exactly as I like.

The backlighting on it is also perfect.

I don't DVORAK, but the included keypuller makes it simple to swap keys around if you are so inclined.

Buy one.

[cbd1984]

> the included keypuller makes it simple to swap keys around if you are so inclined.

You know what would be nice? If the keyboard had enough intelligence to read the keycaps and modify which codes it sent based on which keycaps are attached to which switches.

OS key remapping tends to vary from 'xmodmap' to 'worse than xmodmap', in my experience. It would be nice if the stupidly obvious thing worked for once.

[detaro]

Normally keys are scanned group-by-group digitally, but Cherry recently came out with a keyboard that uses analogue readout of the key matrix. They now put different resistors at each switch and measure the voltage (so they save delays introduced by the scanning and can sell it as "super fast" to gamers …)

If they put the resistors in the keycaps and managed to get stable contacts to the switches below working, one might be able to get a feature like that in hardware.

But allowing to reprogram the keys in the keyboard controller probably is easier. Longer initial setup time, but how often do people change their keyboard layouts?!

[unfamiliar]

Saying the software is so bad you wish it was done in hardware seems like a step backwards to me. Surely a simpler answer is to write a nice xmodmap GUI.

[adrusi]

Keycaps are somewhat standardized, so unfortunately that would make the keyboard incompatible with third party keycaps.

[aesthetics1]

>> I don't DVORAK, but the included keypuller makes it simple to swap keys around if you are so inclined.

Unfortunately you cannot swap the keys that sit in different rows. You couldn't swap a "Q" and an "A" for example - they have different profiles. See here for more information (picture on the right if you just want a quick visual):

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Keyboard_profile

[lmz]

Don't the keys have different shapes for each row?

[thatswrong0]

I use an alternative layout and I never switched my keys around. You should never be looking at the keyboard while you type, even while learning a new layout.