Maximum PC

As the owner of 3 IBM Model M keyboards,I'm horrified when I sit down at work and have to squish my way through using a rubber-dome keyboard.

What is the limiting factor for making mechanical keyboards more popular to the general public?

(The kind of people who would just buy a Dell or HP form Costco/Best Buy/Fry's..)

Cost. And not everyone likes loud clicky keys. I want a Cherry MX Brown keyboard, but they're kind of rare compared to say the Blue keys.

For the sane reason high airflow fans's in PC's arent more popular, many of them are loud, and I really shouldn't be able to hear my keyboard over the whine of my computer. I've hated mechanical keyboards since my first PC experiences over 30 years ago.

My keyboard of choice right now is Logitech's ultra-thin illuminated keyboard & it won't wake the family when you're surfing pR0n at 2 in the morning

For me it's only due to finding the middle ground with more common boards. I love the cherries (Cherry's?), but the Logitech G series have good enough feedback to not really have me desire for more as much as I use to. They're tall keys, kinda clacky, and just seem to have simulated a Cherry switch in the build. A knock-off feel, but close enough for me.

On the other side of the discussion; What I don't understand is the move to chiklit keys and it's growing adoption. I just can't stand them. Even Lenovo which I consider a go-to laptop went to chiklits which pushes me away right off the bat. Fiddling around at Fry's in the two isles of keyboards has me feeling the majority are attempting to mimic these crummy styles as well.

Chiclet keyes are scissor switches that have a rectangular cross section instead of trapezoids. They have a cleaner look.

Well, that's the mechanics of them. Yup, Yup...but is the root of this original question why people like this stuff that a lot of us really find disgusting? Is typing on Gorilla glass and mini-chiclit slide-out keypads making these things more comfortable and accepting so the market is ruined by following that trend?

Cherry keys are known to attract geeks but the market doesn't follow. We've even saved up for cherry key'd boards with no writing on them at all to prove that we're geeks. Yet today we're going the other way and have to settle for a board or two that will simply do in their absence.

It's a mouse pad to me. I can't purchase another Steel I prefer as they've moved on and gone with the open community and branding. It's the Fatal1ty effect. Make sub par shit on the cheap, endorse it and say they use it, toss some LED's on it, sell it hard and people buy that crap up and skew internal market trends. It's just a firm fact with me that when I'm given a triple-stack wall of keyboards to chose from in a super warehouse that none of them really feel right and most are pure shit unless my aim is to update twitter with. <-this is really our issue as geeks and not users.

Always my opinion dudes. It's a forum and I treat it just like us hanging out at a BBQ with some suds and chatting it up. I don't mean to offend but it's easily done when disagreement occurs in such a gathering spot. Why don't we have Cherry Keys all over the place? Most don't know the difference.

Why do we not all drive Tesla S's?

If that "no offense" part was directed towards me, I didn't realize my posts reflected that. But none taken anyway.

While I agree a lot of "gamer" equipment is just branding and hype, I'm actually fond of mechanical keyboards. There's a subtle difference to them that, well, is kind of indescribable, but I did enjoy the feel of a Cherry Blue keyboard over my work keyboard (rubber dome) and my Logitech Illuminated (scissor switch) I use at home. But is it enough for me to dump my keyboard and switch over? Not really. The thing is, Cherries might be better suited for typing, so at work, it makes sense. But for gaming, I actually prefer shorter travel. Silly as it is to get a benchmark on this, I played Step Mania on a Saitek Eclipse II, then played on a Dell Inspiron 1520. I actually did better on the laptop. So overall, I'm in no rush to grab a Cherry keyboard for home. I type well enough on scissor switches.

Otherwise yeah, I avoid gaming oriented hardware now. None of this is significantly going to improve your skills as a gamer. You can't buy a $100 hardware and expect to suddenly get 10% more frags, or whatever.