The noise is from bottoming out. Put spacers on the keycap stems, and it stops being a problem, no matter what kind of switch you use.
This is easy to do and only a little time-consuming. It's easier and faster when you take a cheap Bic pen, pull out the tip and ink tube, and use the body tube to press the spacers down on the stems - it's just the right diameter, and makes the job much faster.
The spacers are cheap, too, being simple silicone rubber O-rings, and as an extra benefit, the rubber eats up a lot of the bottoming-out force that'd otherwise be transmitted up the key into your fingers, which means you type more comfortably as well as more quietly.
Beats me, but if it comes down to a choice between reengineering people's behavior or reengineering their tools so they can do the same thing they've always done but not get such a poor result, I know which one I've seen to work and which one I haven't.
Thank you! I've been looking for a keyboard like that for years, ever since I had to get rid of my old Zeos mechanical to keep my wife from going insane in our shared office space. The Quiet Pro PC looks absolutely perfect.
Sorry, you're absolutely correct. Still, pain in the arse to get decent keysets for and I've always found the ALPS design to be 'wobbly'. Something about them is extremely uncomfortable to me.
In my opinion, if you know you're going to be working in an open office setting, you should try to be courteous and minimize the negative impact you have on your coworkers. I think you should be willing to make the choice to use a quieter keyboard that isn't necessarily your favorite.
So I'd say the problem is with both. The open office is the ultimate source of the issue, but it can be compounded by workers who make choices that exacerbate the situation. The reality is that an open office can be quite pleasant if the people working in it collectively make effective choices that take into account the well-being of the group.
I recently got one and I admit it's really loud. But this shouldn't be an issue in a decent workplace. I have several guys near me who have loud voices and talk a lot. That's worse than a loud keyboard. Open office plans are the problem, not keyboards or loud people.
I am distracted by your loud keyboard. Frequently, I find myself wishing that you had a quiet keyboard like everyone else in the office. I am particularly irritated by the noise of your keyboard each morning when you write long emails or posts. When you are coding and there are frequent long breaks when you are thinking, it is not quite as distracting, but I still don't like it.
I agree with you that open office plans are the problem, but your keyboard makes that problem worse.
In my parallel universe, you're also the one telling your coworkers about your weekend every Monday morning, but I agree with your point. :-)
> Open offices are just stupid. They cause conflict where there shouldn't be.
Yes.
I would kill someone for a walled office, even if there was a high risk of life imprisonment, as long as there was some assurance that the prison cell would have walls.
I was using a Model M when working in an open office in China. No one really cared, because the guy in the cubicle next to me had a sunflower/watermelon seed habit. Damn, no one should be de-shelling seeds in an open office! Or in the afternoon we would have fruit, and pear day everyone would be smacking and slurping (Chinese pears are much more watery than western pears, I hate pear day!), or everyone talking/arguing/whatever. Turns out my keyboard wasn't weird in what was already a high noise environment.
I had to invest in a pair of Bose noise cancellation headphone a long time ago.
This is true. But, if you're in an open office, don't you think the decent thing to do is to not speak loudly (and therefore not use a loud mechanical keyboard)?
There are mech keyboards with more quiet switches. At least use one of those.
But, if you're in an open office, don't you think the decent thing to do is to not speak loudly (and therefore not use a loud mechanical keyboard)?
No, that just shows tacit acceptance of the situation and exacerbates the problem over time. If you work in an open plan environment, the best thing to do is use the noisiest keyboard you can find, wear headphones that intentionally leak noise and listen to your music loud, do as many personal phone calls as you can from your desk, etc. And then, when people complain, point out that you didn't ask for an open plan office, and ask them to go to their manager and explain how horrible open plan is.
Worst case, you get fired. Big deal, now you have a chance to look for a place to work that isn't brain dead.
Pretty much every mechanical keyboard will be loud. I use a board with Cherry Red switches at work, and while it's much quieter than my board with Cherry Blue switches that I use at home, it is still louder than the rubber dome keyboard it replaced.
It doesn't bother my coworkers, but I also have an actual cube, so there's at least a little bit of fabric-covered foam inbetween us.
Heh. I had a former cow-orker who hated by Topre board. I told him if he'd (a) keep his computer volume off and (b) not hold impromptu, non-work meetings as his desk at bar-volumes, I'd try to use a crappy board for him.
He was offended. I kept my board.
Again, the root problem is the veal-fattening pens.
Sure. It's good to be courteous. But in the end it comes down to the fact that open offices are just plain stupid. I don't know what the motivation behind them is but it's certainly not to make a productive workplace.
I agree with you that open office is the problem, however my old mechanical keyboard is louder than most people with a loud voice and it would probably be used more often.
I have never suffered the tyranny of an open office. I do use a loud keyboard and honestly can't imagine going without it.
I am easily distracted by sensory stimuli. It ruins my concentration. At home I have some nice in ear noise isolating ear buds and some of those ear muffs designed for yard work. My children can, and do, reenact world wars on the hard woods above me and I can't hear it.
If I ever were in an open office, when I do deep work, those things would stay on.
So I sympathize, but the open office puts knowledge workers who need to concentrate and type in a lose / lose environment.
So you would prefer your coworkers develop RSI symptoms from straining to use a laptop keyboard? Not all of us can use laptops for extended periods of time. Now if I could type with my brain (and I don't mean by smashing my head repeatedly on the keyboard), that's Sam Altman status quo shattering next-level stuff, but I don't think we're there yet.
As others have replied, the problem isn't my typing, it's <40 square feet of personal space and no noise partitioning whatsoever.
The standard keyboard layout, which every mechanical keyboard I've ever seen (including my beloved model M) is terrible for your wrists. The people using mechanical keyboards are not saving themselves anything.
Get a proper ergonomic keyboard like the microsoft sculpt if you actually care about the health of you hands.
Mechanical keyboards are cool, which is why I own one, and when I had an office why I used one every day. But mechanical keyboards are like the loud exhaust that people put on their cars. Yeah, there is a reason that some cars have loud exhausts, but that isn't why you put that on your honda civic.
You appear to think that mechanical boards cannot be ergonomic. I agree that the Model M and friends are terrible, but that's hardly[1] the end[2] of the mechanical[3] ergo[4] story[5].
>If you type a lot over a prolonged period of time, yes. If you type in short bursts (like most programmers), no, mechanicals are actually useful.
Is this really how most programmers work, though? When I'm learning a new language or tool, sure, but after that it's mostly just the activity of writing the code.
> Is this really how most programmers work, though?
Yes, well, I guess it depends on how mundane the coding is. It is possible that a programmer spends a lot of time typing and not a lot of time thinking, but then it is probably brain dead boilerplate that should have been automated somehow.
> When I'm learning a new language or tool, sure, but after that it's mostly just the activity of writing the code.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "writing code".
Look, I'm not trying to get into an argument with you here, but:
1) You are not an authority on all programmers, or even most programmers.
2) The primary way that programmers express their work is by typing. The idea that programmers don't do very much typing, or that typing comfort/safety isn't relevant to programers is demonstrably absurd.
>"it is probably brain dead boilerplate that should have been automated somehow."
3) This thinly veiled derision is, imho, not constructive/rude. Do you consider the linux kernal "brain dead boilerplate"? Just some quick googling shows that the per developer code contribution is about 11,000 loc per release. That is code that was in the release, and doesn't even account for code that was typed, then removed, then retyped, etc.
Believe whatever you want, but I find the idea that programmers somehow don't need to care about ergonomics extremely shortsighted.
I've been down this route many times. And after Dvorak, Kinesis, and a wide assortment of supposedly ergonomic keyboards, El-cheapo $15 Kensington USB keyboards and $20 Logitech trac-balls turn out to work best with my wrists, occasionally aided by Imax smartgloves.
I have a veritable museum of failed keyboards and pointing devices in my closet. IMO there is no silver bullet here. Also to extend your automotive metaphor, my nephew's late model diesel pickup gets 30+ mpg. Appearances and brand new shiny can be deceiving.
I need large mouses to not get hand pain, and the sculpt mouse has been the biggest mouse that I've found that fit that criteria for me quite well. It's even bigger than the mx master.
> Get a proper ergonomic keyboard like the microsoft sculpt if you actually care about the health of you hands.
I had this conversation with my coworker a few minutes ago who uses an ergonomic keyboard. I believe that the amount of stress you're going to have from a non-ergonomic keyboard is directly related to your posture, which is directly related to your anatomy. For instance my coworker is very wide and he prefers to spread his elbows out while typing.
I, on the other hand don't spread out my elbows that far out, so I don't really feel that must stress while typing for long hours.
One thing which I do notice is that I type by moving my right wrist around (and most people do that to keep their wrists free for grabbing mouse and other things). But if I try doing touch typing where I keep my fingers on the homerow, then my wrists hurt.
Maybe I'm going to give ergo-dox a shot to see what am I missing.
I love it SO much. I wouldn't be able to be a software engineer without it. The amount of neck, shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist and hand pain I once had is now gone completely. Not to mention I am a much faster and more accurate typist.
I struggled a long time with RSI, and for me both the mechanical and ergonomic keyboards solve the problem. A model M fixed it, and then later a microsoft comfort curve also fixed it. The comfort curve is a lot more quiet, so out of respect for my coworkers I use that one, although I do miss the feel of the model M.
Drifting rather off-topic here, but why credit the "heighten the contradictions" strategy to a weird modern academic cult? Rebranding Leninist ideas about sabotage, I guess, makes it seem fresh to the rubes. Never mind that attempting to time social and political systems doesn't work much better than timing the market, and if you get it wrong, you're just being a horrible person. (Assuming your underlying goals are good ones to begin with.)
Personally I'd rather listen to mechanical keyboards rather than people having meetings at their desks, I can fairly easily tune out non-human sounds... Unfortunately not many people seem to have them despite my office being the 'geekiest' in the Seattle region. sigh
I have a mechanical keyboard at home (Corsair Gaming K95 RGB), but at work I use a Mac wired keyboard (on a PC). Super quiet and probably the best performing scissor switch keyboard.
Hey, I have the same keyboard! Do you actually use all the extra G keys or macros? I thought I would but the cognitive load of memorizing what each G key stands for is too much.
This is why I gave up my old IBM Model M for a quieter DAS Model S. I don't really want to type on cheaper mushy keyboards, so this is a nice compromise.
I have had mechanical keyboards four different offices (1 cube, 3 open workspaces) and got very lucky with people either not minding or, at one company, a co-worker saying "that's music to my hears."
I've had a friend on the wrong floor at one company who had to switch to MX Browns with o-ring dampeners.
If a company banned me from using a mech keyboard entirely, I'd start looking for another job.
Also be careful not to point out that "keyboard noise" is the crux of the issue, since then you'll end up with those employees being told they can't use their nice keyboards that they probably paid a lot for just to use at work, which will result in said employees really, really not liking you if they find out it was you that complained.
Anecdotes are the best you're going to get on that. Who's going to fund a serious scientific study on the effects of mechanical keyboards on RSI? The mechanical keyboard makers comprise a very small, niche industry these days.
The anecdotes are correct: with a proper mechanical keyboard, you don't have to bottom out on the keys, and only have to press enough to make them click. Once you retrain yourself to do that, then you're putting a lot less stress on your fingers, compared to rubber-dome keyboards where you're forced to mash the keys down until they bottom out.