As corporations "consolidate" choice disappears. More are more products are bound to be removed and only the most successful ones will remain. Only when there are medium sized companies consumers have choice.
There are more choices from more manufacturers than there has ever been in the history of humanity.
You can buy keyboards from wish.com e-waste to standard "good" to enthusiast vessels for artistic expression to hyper-expensive ergonomic solutions that take weeks to learn how to use.
There is a near-infinite selection to choose from at near-infinite price points.
You can build custom keyboards with open source hardware AND software designs.
"Back in thuh day" you could only choose between what was in stock at CompUSA, Circuit City, and Best Buy. Now there are so many options it is overwhelming.
Are we in the golden age of consumer choice? Minus Microsoft, of course.
So yeah it's sometimes a good thing - but in this situation, and at least in my neck of world woods,
most of the newer competing options to for my microsoft natural 4000 - not available to touch in person at my local best buy / office depot/max
So I look many times at amazon which has some similar at a good price, some with backlit keys and such - I've ordered a few - none of them feel the same.. one has a wierd feel that makes me cringe like touching neoprene (not everyone has that ick feel with that material) -
the keypresses are not the same either - so I am not using any of the new options but it looks like I will at some point.
I'd like to see more 'cases' for the non-msoft / non-logitech keyboards - (want to take full size ergo keys to different places) searching recently I've mainly seen just a couple of options for the two big known brands.
Of course this is keeping on the budget side of things. I've kicked the rabbit hole of ~200+ options and like what I see, but really want to touch and feel before such a buy.
tldr - the consolidation has sucked up choice at the retailers, and also the retailers themselves - and some competition has been good it seems, but not as great as if amazon had a mobile truck that would bring every no name ergo keyboard to touch and feel first before buying.
You can buy keyboards from wish.com e-waste to standard "good" to enthusiast vessels for artistic expression to hyper-expensive ergonomic solutions that take weeks to learn how to use.
There is a near-infinite selection to choose from at near-infinite price points.
You can build custom keyboards with open source hardware AND software designs.
"Back in thuh day" you could only choose between what was in stock at CompUSA, Circuit City, and Best Buy. Now there are so many options it is overwhelming.
Are we in the golden age of consumer choice? Minus Microsoft, of course.