Das Keyboard - 2 months on

I received a sweet present from my wife at XMas - a Das Keyboard (2nd series). I’ve been using it on and off since then and thought I’d post my thoughts thus far:

Initial Experience - it is a NICE keyboard, with a fantastic action. I am a reasonable touch-typist and was able to use it fairly well from the get-go. Except for “special” characters I didn’t/don’t have any problems. The one problem I did have as I would occasionally look down at the keyboard for re-assurance and kind of freak out when there was nothing on the keys.

Office Usage - I mostly use it at work now. The noise is something I’m conscious of, since it is louder than a regular keyboard. Some co-workers get a bit weirded out by it. I leave a regular USB keyboard plugged in too in case a visitor wants to use that instead (and for other reasons - see below).

Glitches - based on current usage there seems to be two problems I’m having using the Das Keyboard. The first is when I try to do “ad-hoc“ typing when my hands have left the home position (such as one-handed typing with a mouse). It can be pretty hard to pick out sone keys in that situation. The other time I have issues is when filling in password text boxes. A combination of

•  password complexity rules
• frequent password change policies
• a desire on my part to have different passwords for every single system I have a login to
• fear, fear is the mind killer

means that typing passwords is…problematic. One failed attempt and doubt creeps in. Special characters seem especially problematic since they are relatively infrequently typed. Now I have a second regular keyboard close by to prevent embarassing “I can’t log in to the server because I can’t type that password correctly” type issues.

Overall - I feel like my typing is getting (even) better, and it is just a great keyboard to type on. As soon as I’ve nailed the layout of all the special characters there’ll be no looking back (or looking down at the keys).

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