K thinks I’m a freak. In her defense, I’m not certain that she would have ordered a $70 keyboard, so she may be right. In my defense, I bought my first IBM-clone in 1990 and have kept the keyboard I chose since then. The company I bought it from, Formosa Computing (for those of you in NC, think Intrex), assembled parts and sold white-box computers. The keyboard that they originally gave me was awful. I didn’t like the mushy keys, so I went back, tried a dozen different keyboards and finally exchanged it for something with a bit more tactile response. With every new computer I bought, I used this keyboard. At one point, it had an AT to PS/2 to USB adapter in order to get it working.
Unfortunately, it finally died a couple of months ago. I bought a replacement, ergonomic, wireless keyboard that I promptly hated. I did try, I gave it a chance, but I kept mistyping. Tonight, I finally broke down and bought a new keyboard from Unicomp, the people that own the license to the original IBM buckling spring keyboard patent used on the Model M keyboards.
Does all of this make me a freak? Probably, but it could be worse. I could be as obsessive as these guys.