I treated myself and bought one last year. It failed electronically six months later despite spending nearly all its time in the box...I bought it to use when using an RPi. Unicomp fixed it under warranty but made me pay for shipping it back to them.
To me, not covering shipping on warranty is a tell that their quality is low enough that failed keyboards are common. I don’t think I have ever seen a device have an electronically failed USB port...cables sure but this wasn’t.
Anyway mine was junk and might still be. I wouldn’t recommend Unicomp anymore.
For what it's worth, I own a Unicomp keyboard I got in 2013 and it still works flawlessly to this day. Not doubting nor disqualifying your experience, but just want to provide a counterbalance.
Failing USB electronics seems symptomatic of corner cutting at the level of pennies per unit. Sure anyone can get a bad batch of chips. It’s what gets done about it that speaks to quality.
This wasn’t rough use by me. It was barely used. It was a manufacturing defect and there is no way that Unicomp could not know after the keyboard was in their shop and unlikely they didn’t know before. You just can’t be in the keyboard business that long and not know what is going on.
They probably made good keyboards for a long time and might again. Mine was poorly made in terms of reliability and I don’t have confidence that they repaired it with more reliable components.
I have a Model M with a 1984 date code. The most interesting thing was that keyboard at IBM (at the time I was there) were a "green" tag part, meaning that you could just replace at customer no questions asked, not a ton of tracking. The number of these that got swapped just because they were dirty was scary. We did not have to account for them. I wish I had kept a bunch at this point.
My Model M is used on the gaming PC (Civ, XCOM and the like, not FPS).
For everyday use on the laptop I have a Japanese layout Filco Majestouch Convertible 2 TKL w/Cherry Red switches (45 cN force). I also have the same with Cherry Brown switches (55 cN). Not sure which I like the best at this point. The Model M is 70 cN.
I have a Model F somewhere around here in box. I think I need to find it and clean it up.
To me, not covering shipping on warranty is a tell that their quality is low enough that failed keyboards are common. I don’t think I have ever seen a device have an electronically failed USB port...cables sure but this wasn’t.
Anyway mine was junk and might still be. I wouldn’t recommend Unicomp anymore.