Comment by jerlam
1 day ago
> Where are all the cheep rubber dome splits?
The only halfway decent player in this category was Microsoft, with its line of Natural Keyboards. I've used four or five of them, decent enough. I doubt Microsoft was making a lot of money.
The line was discontinued in 2023 and sold to Incase:
https://www.incase.com/pages/incase-designed-by-microsoft-co...
Kinesis now has https://kinesis-ergo.com/keyboards/mwave/ as a better(to me) Microsoft sculpt clone in a similar price range.
Looks good, they kept the negative tilt which I find very important but nearly impossible to pitch to non-ergonomic keyboard users.
I've been pretty happy with this as a MS 4000 replacement: https://eu.perixx.com/products/periboard-535 - general tent/reverse tilt/split angle feels about the same. Like the MS 4000, it's a full size keyboard, with symmetrical sets of meta keys, unintrusive level of F-lock nonsense, easily accessible keyboard volume controls, and a generally standard layout that will probably require only minimal retraining. Also connects to your computer using a cable... none of that wireless nonsense. The UK layout version is under £100 on Amazon.
It feels a bit less solid than the MS 4000, but it's nicer to type on.
(The MS 4000 was always a huge pain to repair (endless screws to get inside, many annoyingly inaccessible; never anything obviously wrong once in there; time-consuming cleaning/drying-out process; endless screws to put it back together again), but this looks like it might be a bit better. Not many screws on the bottom. It isn't thick enough for there to be any hiding inside. The keyswitches will probably be individually replaceable. Ask me again in 10 years though!)