Couldn't give them away. I should charge $110 for them.

It doesn't really matter whether the keys go clickety-clack to me, just as long as they can stand up to my abuse. I guess if all other things were equal, I'd prefer quiet so I could compute stealthily, (and not wake others up in the wee hours of the morning), but not so quiet I can't tell when I've hit a key.

Nice looking keyboard though. How thick is this new Das? The current keyboard I use is maybe 1/2 an inch thick, and I really like it. Make it flat and wireless and I'd buy one immediately.

And wasn't the point of the Das Keyboard that it didn't have labels? I guess they weren't selling enough units. I wonder why? ;-)

... that somebody would build a keyboard that doesn't have the windows keys located between the control and the alt keys. I don't use the windows keys very much, and hitting them by accident is a real pain in the butt.

Clacking keyboards are not a big deal for me with one exception. I hate it when one news anchor is reading the news while the other one is on the computer clacking away. Very distracting.

I don't see any advantage to mechanical clicks. Of course, I have not tried this keyboard so maybe there is something about this that I don't fully appreciate.

It should be very easy to add a click sound to any keyboard via firmware and you should be able to vary how loud it is. If you want a noisy keyboard (I don't) that would be the way to go.

Ugh. I'm in a relatively open office, one without the benefit of nice sound-absorbing cubicle walls. It's hard enough concentrating without excessive typing noises coming from the desk next to me.

I hate loud keyboards. Hate them. One of my favorite things about my Macs (desktop and laptop) is how quiet the keyboard is. And sharing an office with someone with a loud keyboard is no good either.

I remember all too well how loud those things were and don't miss 'em in the least. The quieter the better. I have one keyboard that I love because you can barely hear the thing when you are typing.

@Richgreer

Digital Equipment used to have an electronic click in their terminal keyboards that you could turn on and off in the setup menu. Strangely, though I detest noisy keyboards, I used to turn the click on in really noisy environments. The VT200 series terminals had the best feel of any keyboard I've ever used.

A keyboard with that fat outlying block of numeric keys may be "classic," but it's an invitation to ergonomic injury as the mousing hand must be held way off to the right--or the alpha keys held offcenter to the left. Seriously, why is this clunky thing considered ideal? I got a mini (laptop-style) keyboard years ago and will never go back.

I own a 17-year-old genuine IBM Model M keyboard. Something about those buckling-spring key switches makes typing magic. I've used a great many keyboards worth anywhere from $5 to $400, and nothing beats the comfort and tactile response of those buckling springs. I'm sorry my keyboard is noisy. I'll buy you some earplugs.

For most fans of such keyboards, it's not actually the noise but the response and feel of the keys that we're looking for. Your typical PC throw-in keyboard is quiet because it has rubber domes that are inexpensive and work, but can be very mushy feeling. Keyboards with mechanical mechanisms are often louder, but more importantly have a much different feel. If you're a fast typer it can make a difference (of course it's subjective.)

This Das keyboard looks pretty trick. Many people love the old IBM Model M's, I'm on a Mac so I really like the old Apple Extended Keyboards.

I much prefer quiet keyboards - the loud ones make me crazy.

As for a previous commenter who mentioned typing speed being affected, I'd tend to agree - though for me, the softer touch, quiet keyboards help me type much faster. I can go 90-95 wpm on a quiet keyboard, whereas on a harder touch, loud keyboard it's more like 75-80 wpm (I've actually tested it). Maybe the difference is in how well I'm able to concentrate with the CLACK CLACK CLACK hammering in my ears. :)

... get rid of those asinine Microsoft Windows keys,

the Caps Lock key, the benign but useless keys (Scroll Lock,

Pause Break, etc.), and those silly Windows-centric F keys.

I pry all of that dreck off of every new keyboard I use.

Do that, and we can talk.

Wow, it's this way or that, with little in between when it comes to clickity clack vs. shhh-keyboards. I can live with either, though what a wild feeling today when I got going on the Das. I'll be sad to see it go, yet at the same time my setup wouldn't allow permanent use anyway, so it was a pleasant, fleeting affair of sorts. Thank you for all of the thoughtful, strong comments - all good. -Joe Hutsko

In my last real 'job' with a major corporate Borg, I was the happy recipient of all -that's right, all- of the IBM extended keyboards that were being discarded, along with their matching CPUs. I will fight to the death for these keyboards! When I used them in CubeLand, tapping away at my Olympic Office Manual-trained touch typing speed of 145wpm, my colleagues fled.

It was a lovely, lovely experience.

...considering I picked up my actual original IBM keyboard from GoodWill for $2. AND you can take all the key covers off to clean them...

I held onto mine for as long as possible, using the keyspan adaptor. But now I've grown accustomed to the flat keyboard of the Macbook and iMac Intel.

of course not quite the same as a vt220. or a tvi910+ :-)

You can actually connect a VT220 keyboard to a PC serial port. The keyboard uses plain old serial data transfer at a standard data rate (ISTR 4800 bps, but it's been a while and I might be mistaken). The signal voltages are also compatible.

OF course, it takes more than hooking it up to make it useful. It took me several evenings to reverse-engineer the character coding and write a driver that would make it fly with DOS or Windows 3.1. I'm pretty sure my old driver (if I could find it) wouldn't work with any recent Windows version and would need to be redone from scratch, but I'm sure it could be done. Linux should be a piece of cake.